
Book W 7^^? 



TIEIIE 



(/ iTcttcr^" ) 








1g^ 



«.VI>TLMORE . 



THE 



LETTERS 



OF THE 



nuiimSi^ ^j^¥. 



EIGHTH EDITION, 

n-TTH THE I,SSX COnifcTIO.\S OF THE AUTHOR. 



^Nvu\^vv^ \sw\- 



BALTIMORE: ■ ' 

PUBLISHED BY FIELDING LUCAS, JUN. 
Printed by J. Robinson, 






DISTRICT OF MAHriAND, ss. 

Be IT REMEMBERED, That on tins twenty-fouvili day of May 
in the thirty-fifth year of the Independence of the 
«**M*k**i» United States of America, Fielding Lucas, Jiin. of the 
♦ "^KAL. t said District, hath deposited in this office, the Title of a 
«(^!M°i<!f'i'^**K Book, the right whereof he claims as proprietor, in the 
words and figures following, to wit 

" The letters of the British Spy. Fourth edition, With the last 
coiTections of the Author." 

In conformity to the Act of the Congress of the United States, 
iEntitled, " An act for the encouragttment of Learning, by securing 
thecopiesof Maps, Charts, and Books to the authors and proprietors 
of such copies, during the times therein mentioned," and also 
to the Act entitled, "An Act supplementai-y to tlie Act, 
entitled, An Act for the encouragement of learning, by securing, 
the copies of Maps, Charts, and Books, to the authors and proprie- 
tors of such copies diu'ing the times therein mentioned, and extend- 
ing the benefits thereof to the arts of Designing, Engraving, and 
Etching historical and otlier prints." 

PHILIP MOORE, 

Ckrk of the Distria ofMarytand. 



ADVERTISEMENT 

TO THE 

FOURTH EDITION. 

The publisher having become possessed of 
a copy of ^* The British Spy," which has 
passed through the hands of the author, 
eagerly embraces an opportunity of submit- 
ting a correct edition of that work to the pa- 
tronage of the publick. These letters were 
originally inserted in a daily journal ; and 
they appeared with all the imperfections to 
which such a mode of publication is unavoida- 
bly liable. In the present edition, a variety 
of errours have been corrected ; and nothing 
has been spared which it was supposed could 
add to its value. 

Of the literary merit of a work which has 
passed the ordeal of criticism with honour, 
not only to the author but to his country, it 



4 ADVERTISEMENT. 

would be impertinent to speak. Common 
fame has decided it to be the fruit of an 
American pen; and classical taste has pro- 
nounced it to be the ofTspring of genius. 
To those who would inculcate the degrading 
doctrine, that this is the country 

"Where Genius sickens, and where Fancy dies,"* 

we would offer the letters of the British Spy- 
as au unquestionable evidence that America 
is entitled to a high rank in the republick of 
letters ; and that the empyreal flame may be 
respired under any region. 

* Clifton. 



*rp THE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGUS. 



Sir, 



The manuscript, from which the following 
letters are extracted, was found in the bed- 
chamber of a hoarding; house in a seaport town 
of Virginia. The gentleman, who had pre- 
viously occupied that chamber, is represented 
by the mistress of the house to have been a 
meek and harmless young man, who med- 
dled very little with the affairs of others, and 
concerning whom no one appeared suffici- 
ently interested to make any inquiry. As it 
seems from the manuscript that the name by 
which he passed was not his real name, 
and as, moreovej, she knew nothing of his 
residence, so That she was totally ignorant to 
whom and whither to direct it, she consi- 
dered the manuscript as lawful prize and 

1* 



made a present of it to me. It seems to be a 
copy of letters written by a young English- 
man of rank, during a tour through the 
United States, in 1803, to a member of the 
British parliament. They are dated from al- 
most every part of the United States, con- 
tain a great deal of geographical descrip- 
tion, a delineation of every character of note 
among us, some literary disquisitions, with 
a great mixture of moral and political ob- 
servation. The letters are prettily written. 
Persons of every description will find in them 
a light and agreeable entertainment ; and to 
the younger part of your readers they may 
not be uninstructive. For the present I se- 
lect a few which were written from this place, 
and by way of distinction, will give them to 
you under the title of the British Sfiy» 



LETTERS. 

LETTER I. 

Richmond^ Sefitember 1. 

You complain, my dear S , that al- 
though I have been resident in Richmond 
upwards of six months, you have heard no- 
thing from me since my arrival. The truth 
is, that I had suspended writing until a more 
intimate acquaintance with the people and 
their country should furnish me with the ma- 
terials for a correspondence. Having now 
collected those materials, the apology ceases, 
and the correspondence begins. But first, a 
word of myself. 

I still continue to wear the mask, and most 
willingly exchange the attentions, which would 



8 THE BRITISH SPY. 

be paid to my rank, for the superiour and 
exquisite pleasure of inspecting this country 
and this people, without attracting to my- 
self a single eye of curiosity, or awak-- 
ening a shade of suspicion. Under my 
assumed name, I gain an admission close 
enough to trace, at leisure, every line 
of the American character ; while the plain- 
ness, or rather humility of my appearance, 
my manners and conversation, put no one on 
his guard, but enable me to take the portrait 
of nature, as it were, asleep and naked. 
Besides, there is something of innocent 
roguery in this masquerade, which I am 
playing, that sorts very well with the spor- 
tiveness of my temper. To sit and decoy the 
human heart from behind all its disguises: to 
watch the capricious evolutions of unrestrain- 
ed nature, frisking, curveting and gambolling 
^t her ease, with the curtain of ceremony 



THE BRITISH SPY. 9 

drawn up to the very sky — ^O ! it is delight- 
ful! 

You are perhaps surprised at my speaking 
of the attentions which would be paid in this 
country to my rank. You will suppose that I 
have forgotten where I am : no such thing. 
I remember well enough that I am in Virgi- 
nia, that state, which, of all the rest, plumes 
herself most highly on the democratick spi- 
rit of her principles. Her political principles 
are indeed democratick enough m all con- 
science. Rights and privileges, as regulated 
by the constitution of the state, belong in 
equal degree to all the citizens; and Peter 
Pindar's remark is perfectly true of the peo- 
ple of this country, that " every blackguard 
scoundrel is a king "* Nevertheless/there 
exists in Virginia a species of social rank, 
from which no country can, I presume, 

* The reader needs scarcely to be reminded that the. 
writer is a Briton and U*ue to his character. 



10 THE BRITISH SPY. 

be entirely free. I mean that kind of rank 
which arises from the different degrees of 
wealth and of intellectual refinement. These 
must introduce a style of living and of con- 
versation, the former of which a poor man 
cannot attain, while an ignorant one would be 
incapable of enjoying the latter. It seems 
to me that from these causes, wherever they 
may exist, circles of society, strongly discri- 
minated, must inevitably result. And one of 
these causes exists in full force in Virginia ; 
for, however they may vaunt of " equal li- 
berty iti church and state," they have but 
litde to boast on the subject of equal proper- 
ty. Indeed there is no country, I believe, 
where property is more unequally distributed 
than in Virginia. This inequality struck me 
with peculiar force in riding through the low- 
er counties on the Potomack. Here and 
there a stalely aristocratick palace, with all 
its appurtenances, strikes the view: while 



THE BRITISH SPY. 1 I 

all around, for many miles, no other build- 
ings are to be seen but the little smoky huts 
and log cabins of poor, laborious, ignorant 
tenants. And, what is very ridiculous, these 
tenants, while they approach the great house, 
cap in hand, with all the fearful trembling 
submission of the lowest feudal vassals, 
boast in their court-yards, with obstreperous 
exultation, that they live in a land of freemen, 
a land of equal liberty and equal rights. 
Whether this debasing sense of inferiority, 
which I have mentioned, be a remnant of 
their colonial character, or whether it be that 
it is natural for poverty and impotence to look 
up with veneration to wealth and power and 
rank, I cannot decide. For my own part, 
however, I have ascribed it to the latter 
cause jj and I have been in a great degree 
confirmed in the opinion, by observing the 
attentions which were paid by the most gen- 



12 THE BRITISH SPY, 

teel people here to the son 

of lord 

You know the circumstances in which his 
lordship left Virginia : that so far from being 
popular, he carried with him the deepest exe- 
crations of these people. Even now, his 
name is seldom mentioned here but in con- 
nexion with terms of abhorrence or contempt. 
Aware of this, and believing it impossible that 

was indebted to his 

father, for all the parade of respect which 
was shown to him, I sought, in his own per- 
sonal accomplishments, a solution of the phe- 
nomenon. But I sought in vain. Without 
one solitary ray of native genius, without one 
adventitious beam of science, without any of 
those traits of soft benevolence which are so 
universally captivating, I found his mind dark 
and benighted, his manners, bold, forward and 
assuming, and his whole character evidently 
inflated with the consideration that he was the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 13 

son of a lord. His deportment was so evi- 
dently dictated by this consideration, and he 
regarded the Virginians, so palpably, in th ; 
humiliating light of inferiour plebeians, that 
I have often wondered how such a man, and 
the son too of so very unpopular a father, 
escaped from this country without personal 
injury, or, at least, personal insult. I am now 
persuaded, that this impunity, and the great 
respect which was paid to him resulted sole- 
ly from his noble descent, and was nothing 
more than the tribute which man pays either 
to imaginary or real superiority. On this 
occasion, I stated my surprise to a young 
Virginian, who happened to belong to the de- 
mocratick party. He, however, did not 
choose to admit the statement; but assert- 
ed, that whatever respect had been shown to 

, proceeded solely from the 

federalists ; and that it was an unguarded 

evolution of their private attachment to mo- 
2 



14 THE BRITISH SPYj 

narchy and its appendages. I then stated the 
subject to a very sensible gentleman, whom 
I knew to belong to the federal phalanx. Not 
v/illing to degrade his party by admitting that 
they would prostrate themselves before the 
empty shadow of nobility, he alleged that no- 
thing had been manifested towards young . . . 

, beyond the hospitality which was 

due to a genteel stranger; and that if there 
had been any thing of parade on his account, 
it was attributable only to the ladies, who had 
merely exercised their wonted privilege of 
coquetting it with a fine young fellow. But 
notwithstanding all this, it was easy to dis- 
cern in the look, the voice, and whole man- 
ner, with which gentlemen as well as ladies 
of both parties saluted and accosted young 
5 a secret spirit of respect- 
ful diffidence, a species of silent, reverential 
abasement, v/hich, as it could not have been 
excited by his personal qualities, must have 



THE BRITISH SPY. 15 

been homage to his rank. Judge, then, 
whether I have not just reason to apprehend, 
that on the annunciation of my real name, 
the curtain of ceremony would fall, and na- 
ture would cease to play her pranks before me. 
Richmond is built, as you will remember, 
on the north side of James river, and at the 
head of tide water. There is a manuscript in 
this state which relates a curious anecdote 
concerning the origin of this town. The land 
hereabout was owned by Col. William Byrd. 
This gentleman, with the former proprietor 
of the land at the head of tide water on Appo- 
matox liver, v/as appointed, it t.£crxis, to run 
the line between Virginia and North-Caro- 
lina. The operation was a most tremendous 
one ; for, in the execution of it, they had 
to penetrate and pass quite through the great 
Dismal Swamp. It would be almost impos- 
sible to give you a just conception of the 
horrours of this enterprise. Imagine to 



16 THE BRITISH SPY. 

yourself an immense morass, more than 
forty miles in length and twenty in breadth, its 
soil a black, deep mire, covered with a 
stupendous forest of juniper and cypress 
trees, whose luxuriant branches, interwoven 
throughout, intercept the beams of the sun 
and teach day to counterfeit the night. This 
forest, which until that time, perhaps, the 
human foot had never violated, had become 
the secure retreat of ten thousaiid beasts of 
prey. The adventurers, therefore, beside the 
almost endless labour of felling trees in a pro- 
per direction to form a footway throughout, 
moved amid perpetual terrours, and each 
night had to sleep en militaire, upon their 
arms, surrounded with the deafening, soul 
chilling yell of those hunger-smitten lords of 
the desert. It was, one night, ss they lay in 
the midst of scenes like these, that Hope, that 
never-failing friend of man, paid them a con- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 17 

soling visit and sketched in brilliant prospect, 
the plans of Richmond and Petersburg.* 

Richmond occupies a very picturesque and 
most beautiful situation. I have never met 
with such an assemblage of striking and in- 
teresting objects. The town, dispersed over 
hills of various shapes 4 the river descending 
from west to east and obstructed by a mul- 
titude of small islands, clumps of trees, and 
myriads of rocks ; among which it tumbles, 
foams and roars ; constituting what are call- 
ed the falls ; the same river, at the lower end 
of the town, bending at right angles to the 
south and winding reluctantly off for many 
miles in that direction ! its polished surface 
caught here and there by the eye, but more 
generally covered from the view by trees ; 

* So at least, speaks the manuscript account which Col. 
Byrd has left of this expedition, and which is now in the 
hands of some of his descendants ; perhaps of the family 
at Westover. 



18 THE BRITISH SPY. 

among which the white sails of approaching 
and departing vessels exhibit a curious and 
interesting appearance : then again, on the 
opposite side, the little town of Manchester, 
built on a hill, which, sloping gently to the 
river, opens the whole town to the view, in- 
terspersed, as it is, with vigorous and flour- 
ishing poplars, and surrounded to a great 
distance by green plains and stately woods — 
all these objects, falling at once under the eye, 
constitute, by far, the most finely varied and 
most animated landscape that I have ever 
seen. A mountain, like the Blue Ridge, in 
the western horizon, and the rich tint with 
which the hand of a Pennsylvanian farmer 
would paint the adjacent fields, would make 
this a more enchanting spot than even Da- 
mascus is described to be. 

I will endeavour to procure for you a per- 
spective view of Richmond, with the embel- 
lishments of fancy which I have just mention- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 19 

ed ; and you will do me the honour to give 
it a place in your pavilion. 

Adieu for the present, my dear S 

May the perpetual smiles of heaven be yours. 



LETTER II. 

Richmondy September 7, 

Almost every day, my dear S , some 

new evidence presents itself in support of the 
Abbe Raynal's opinion, that this continent was 
once covered by the ocean, from which it has 
gradually emerged. But that this emersion 
is, even comparatively speaking, of recent 
date, cannot be admitted ; unless the com- 
parison be made with the creation of the 
earth; and even then, in order to justify 
the remark, the era of the creation must, I 
fear, be fixed much farther back than the 
period which has been inferred from the Mo- 
saic account* 

* Some errour has certainly happened hi computing the 
er* of the earth's creation from the five b«pks of Moses. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 21 

The following facts are authenticated beyond 
any kind of doubt. During the last spring, a 
gentleman in the neighbourhood of Williams- 
burg, about sixty miles below this place, in 

Voltaire informs us, that certain French Philosophers, who 
visited China inspected the official register or history of the 
eclipses of the san and moon, which, it seems, has been 
C(MitinualIy kept in that country ; that on calculating them 
back, they were all found correct, and conducted those 
philosophers to a period (I will not undertake to speak 
with certainty of the time, but I think) twenty -tiiree centu- 
I'ies before the Mosaic era. It is notorious, howerer, that 
the Chinese plume themselves on the antiquity of their 
country ; and in order to prop this, it would have been just 
as easy for the Chinese astronomers to have fabricated and 
d'*essed up the register in question, by posterior calcula- 
tions, as for the French astronomers to have made their 
retrospective examination of the accuracy of those eclipses. 
The same science precisely was requisite for both purpo- 
ses; and although the improvement of the ai'ts and scien- 
ses in China, was found, by the first Euix)peans who v/ent 
amongst them, to bear no pi'oportion to the antiquity of 
the country, yet there is no reason to doubt that the Chi- 



22 THE BRITISH SPY. 

digging a ditch on his farm, discovered about 
four or five feet below the surface of the earth, 
a considerable portion of the skeleton of a 
whale. Several fragments of the ribs and 

nese mandarins were at least as competent to the calcula- 
tion of an eclipse as the shepheixls of Eg)pt. Indeed we 
are, 1 believe, expressly told, that the Chinese, long before 
they were visited by the people of Europe, had been in the 
habit of using a species of astronomical apparatus ; and of 
stamping almanacs from plates or blocks, many hundred 
years, even before printing was discovered in Europe. I 
see no great reason, therefore, to rely with very implicit 
confidence on the register of China. Indeed I am very lit- 
tle dicposed to build my faith, as to any historical fact, on 
evidence perfectly within the reach of human art and im- 
posture ; comprehending all writings, insciiptions, litei-ary 
or hieroglyphic, medals, &c. which tend, either to flatter 
our passion for the marvellous or aggrandize the particii^ 
lar nation in whose bosom they are found. And, therefore, 
together with the Chinese register, I throw out of the con» 
sideration of this question another record, which goes tp 
the same i)urpose : I mean the Chaldaic manuscript fount^ 
by Alexander in the city of Babylon. 



THE BRITISH SI*Y. 25 

Other parts of the system were found ; and all 
the vertebrae regularly arranged and very 
little impaired as to their figure. The spot, 
on which this skeleton was found, lies about 

The inferences reported by Mr. Brydone, as having been 
drawn, by Recupero, from the lavas of mount Etna (those 
stupendous records which no human art or imposture could 
possibly have fabricated) deserve, I think, much more se* 
rious attention. They are subject, indeed, to one of the 
preceding objections : to wit, that the data, from which all 
the subsequent calculations ai'e drawn, are inscriptions : ap- 
pealing not only to our passion for the marvellous, but 
flattering the vanity of the Sicilians, by establishing the 
great age of their mountain, at once their curse and their 
blessing. These inscriptions, however, do not rest merely 
on their own authority : they allege a fact which is very 
strongly countenanced by recent and unerring observation. 
As Brydone may not be in the hands of every person who 
may chance to possess and read this bagatelle, and as this 
subject is really curious and interesting, I beg leave to sub" 
join those parts of that traveller's highly entertaining let- 
t'ters, whicTi relate to it. - 



24 THE BRITISH SPY. 

two miles from the nearest shore of James 
river, and fifty or sixty from the Atlantick 
ocean. The whole phenomenon bore the 
clearest evidence that the animal had pe- 

" The last lava we crossed, before our arrival there \Jaci 
Reale] is of vas't extent. I thought we never should have 
had done with it: it certainly is not less than six or seven 
miles broad, and appears in many places to be of an enor- 
mous depth. 

«* When we came near the sea, I was desirous to see what 
form it had assumed in meeting with the water. 1 went to 
examine it, and found it had driven back the waves for up- 
wards of a mile, and had formed a large, black, high pro- 
montory, where, before, it was deep water. This lava, I 
imagined, from its barrenness, for it is, as yet, covered with 
a veiy scanty soil, had run from the mountain only a few 
ages ago; but was surprised to be informed by Signior 
Recupero, the historiographer of Etna, that this very lava 
is mentioned by Diodorus Siculus to have burst from Etna, 
in the time of the second Punic war, when Sj-racuse was 
besieged by the Romans. A detachment was sent from 
Taurominum to the relief of the besieged. They wer<? 
stopped on their march by this stream of lava which ha- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 25 

lished in its native element ; and as the ocean 
is the nearest resort of the whale, it follows 
that the ocean must once have covered the 
country, at least as high up as Williams- 
burg. 

ving reached the sea before theh' arrival at the foot of the 
mountain, had cut off their passage, and obliged them 
to return by the back of Etna, upwards of a hundred miles 
about. His authority for -this, he tells me, was takea 
from inscriptions on Roman monuments found on this 
lava, and that it was likewise well ascertained by many of 
the old Sicilian authors. Now as this is about two thou- • 
sand years ago, one would imagine, if lavas have a 
regular progress in becoming fertile fields, that this must 
long ago have become at least arable ; this, however, 
is not the case ; and it is, as yet, only covered with a 
very scanty vegetation and incapable of producing either 
corn or vines. There are indeed pretty large trees grow- 
ing in the crevices which are full of a rich earth ; but 
in all probability, it will be some hundred years yet, before 
thei-e is enough of it to render this land of any use to tlie 
proprietors. 



26 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Again, in digging several wells lately in 
this town, the teeth of sharks were found 
from sixty to ninety or a hundred feet below 
the surface of the earth. The probability is 
that these teeth were deposited by the shark 
itself; and as this fish is never known to in- 

*'It is curious to consider, that the surface of this black 
and barren matter, in process of time, becomes one of the 
most fertile soils upon earth : But what must be the time 
to bring it to its utmost perfection, when after two thou- 
sand years, it is still, in most places, but a barren rock ?" 
Vol. I. Letter 6. 

** Signior Recupero, who obligingly engages to be our 
cicerone, has shown us some curious remains of anti- 
quity ; but they have been all sn shaken and shattered by 
the mountain, that hardly any thing is to be found intire. 

" Near to a vault, which is now thirty feet below ground 
and has, probably, been a burial place, there is a draw- 
well, where there are several strata of lavas, ivith earth 
to a co7isiderable thickness over the surface of each stra- 
tiim. llecupero has made use of this as an argument to 
prove the great antiquity of the mountain. For if it re- 
quire two thousand years or upwards, to form but a 



THE BRITISH SPY. 27 

vest very shallow streams, the conclusion 
is clear that this whole country has once 
been buried under several fathoms of water. 
At all events, these teeth must be considered 
as ascertaining what was once the surface of 
the earth here ; which surface is very little 
higher than that of James river. Now if it 
be considered that there has been no percepti- 

scanty soil on the surface of a lava, there must have 
been more than that space of time betwixt each of the 
eruptions which have formed these strata. But what 
shall we say of a pit they sunk near to Jaci of a great 
depth. They pierced through seven distinct lavas, one 
under the other, the surfaces of which were par- 
allel, and most of them covered -with a thick bed of rich 
earth. Xow, says he, the eruption which formed the 
lowest of these lavas, if we may be allowed to reason 
from analog}', must have flowed from the mountain at 
least fourteen thousand years ago." Vol. T. Letter 7» 
Whereas the comjjutation inferred, but without doubt 
inaccurately, from the Pentateuch, makes the earth it" 
self only between five and six tliousand years old. 



28 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ble difference wrought in the figure or eleva- 
tion of the coast, nor, consequently, in the 
precipitation of the interiour streams since 
the earliest recorded discovery of Virp^inia, 
which was two hundred years ago, it will 
follow, that James river must, for many hun- 
dreds, perhaps thousands of years, have been 
running, at least here, with a very rapid, 
headlong current ; the friction whereof must 
certainly have rendered the channel much 
deeper than it was at the time of the depo- 
sition of these teeth. The result is clear, 
that the surface of the stream, which even 
now, after all this friction and consequent de- 
pression, is so nearly on a level with the site 
of the shark's teeth, must, originally, have 
been much higher. I take this to be an irre- 
fragable proof, that the land here was then 
inundated ; and as there is no ground between 
this and the Atlantick, higher than that on 
which Richmond is built, it seems to me 



THE BRITISH SPY. 29 

indisputably certain, that the whole of this 
beautiful country was once covered with a 
dreary waste of water.* 

To what curious and interesting reflections 
does this subject lead us ? Over this hill on 
which I am now sitting and writing at my ease, 
and from which I look with delight on the 
landscape that smiles around me — over this 

* An elegant and well informed writer on the theorv of 
the earth, under the signature of " An inquirer," whose 
remarks were suggested by the perusal of this letter of the 
British Spy, observes that sea shells and other marine sub- 
stances are found in every explored part of the world, ** on 
the loftiest mountains of Europe and the still loftier 
Andes of South America." As the British Spy was not 
writing a regular and elaborate treatise on the origin of 
the earth, he did not deem it material to congregate all 
the facts which have been seen, and supposed, in relation 
to this subject. 

Whether the British Spy is to be considered as an Eng- 
lishman of rank on a tour through America, and writing 
the above letter in Richmond to liis friend in Londoji 5 or 

3* 



30 THE BRITISH SPY. 

hill and over this landscape, the billows of the 
ocean have rolled in wild and dreadful fury, 
while the leviathan, the whale and all the 
monsters of the deep, have disported them- 
selves amid the fearful tempest. 

Where was then the shore of the ocean ? 
From this place, for eighty miles to the west- 
ward, the ascent of the country is very gra- 
dual; to and even up the Blue Ridge, marine 
shells and other phenomena are found, which 
demonstrate that that country too, has been 
visited by the ocean. How then has it emer- 

Avhether he is to be considered as one of our own citizens 
disposed to entertain the people of Kichmond and its vici- 
nity with a light and amusing speculation on the origin of 
their country, in either instance it was both more natural, 
and more interesting that the speculation should appear to 
have grown out of recent facts discovered in their own 
town or neighbourhood, and with which they are all sup- 
posed to be convei'sant, than on distant and controvertible 
facts, which it was not important to the inquiry, whether 
they kaew or believed, or. not. 



THE BRITISH SPY, 31 

ged ? Has it been by a sudden convulsion ? 
Certainly not. No observing man, who has 
ever travelled from the Blue Ridge to the 
Atlantick, can doubt that this immersion has 
been effected by very slow gradations. For 
as you advance to the east, the proofs of the 
former submersion of the country thicken 
upon you. On the shores of York river, the 
bones of whales abound; and I have been 
not a little amused in walking on the sand 
beach of that river during the recess of the 
tide, and looking up at the high cliff or bank 
above me, to observe strata of sea shells not 
yet calcined, like those which lay on the 
beach under my feet, interspersed with strata 
of earth (the joint result no doubt of sand 
and putrid vegetables) exhibiting at once a 
sample of the manner in which the adjacent 
soil had been formed, and proof of the com- 
paratively recent desertion of the waters. 
Upon the whole, every thing here tends to 



32 THE BRITISH SPY. 

confirm the ingenious theory of Mr. Buffon: 
that the eastern coasts of continents are en- 
larged by the perpetual revolution of the 
earih from west to east, which has the obvi- 
ous tendency to conglomerate the loose sands 
of the sea on the eastern coast ; while the tides 
of the ocean, drawn from east to west, against 
the revolving earth) contribute to aid the 
process, and hasten the alluvion. But admit- 
ting the Abbe Raynai's idea, that America is 
a far younger country than either of the other 
continents, or in other words, that America 
has emerged long since their formation, how 
did it happen that the materials, which com- 
pose this continent, were not accumulated 
on the eastern coast of Asia ? Was it, that 
the present mountains of America, then pro- 
tuberances on the bed of the ocean, inter- 
cepted a part of the passing sands which 
WOuW otherwise have been washed on the 
Asiatic shore, and thus became the rudiments 



THE BRITISH SPY. 33 

of this vast continent? If so, America is un- 
der much greater obHgations to her barren 
mountains, than she has hitherto supposed. 

But while Mr. Buffon's theory accounts 
very handsomely for the enlargement of the 
eastern coast, it offers no kind of reason 
for any extension of the western ; on the con- 
trary, the very causes assigned, to supply the 
addition to the eastern, seem at first view to 
threaten a diminution of the western coast. 
Accordingly, Mr. Buffon, we see has adopt- 
ed also the latter idea; and, in the constant 
abluvion from the western coast of one con- 
tinent, has found a perennial source of mate- 
rials for the eastern coast of that which lies 
behind it. This last idea, hov/ever, by no 
means quadrates with the hypothesis, that 
the mountains of America formed the origi- 
nal stamina of the continent ; for, on the latter 
supposition, the mountains themselves would 
constitute the western coast j since Mr. Buf- 



34 THE BRITISH SPY. 

fon's theory precludes the idea of any acces- 
sion in that quarter. But the mountains do 
not constitute the western coast. On the 
contrary, there is a wider extent of country 
between the great mountains in North Ame- 
rica, and the pacific or the northern oceans, 
than there is between the same mountains 
and the Atlantick ocean. Mr. Buffon's theory, 
therefore, however rational as to the eastern, 
becomes defective, as he presses it, in relation 
to the western, coast ; unless, to accommodate 
the theory, we suppose the total abrasion of 
some great mountain which originally con- 
stituted the western limit, and which was, 
itself, the embryon of this continent. Bat for 
many reasons, and particularly the present 
contiguity to Asia, at one part, where such a 
mountain, according to the hypothesis, must 
have run, the idea of any such limit will be 
thought rather too extravagant for adoption. 
The fact is, that Mr. Buffon has considered 



THE BllITISH SPY. 35 

his theory rather in its operation on a conti- 
nent already estabUshed, than on the birth or 
primitive emersion of a continent from the 
ocean. 

As to the western part of this continent, I 
mean that which Ues beyond the Alleghany 
mountains, if it were not originally gained 
from the ocean, it has received an accumula- 
tion of earth by no means less wonderful. 
Far beyond the Ohio, in piercing the earth 
for water, the stumps of trees, bearing the 
most evident knpressions of the axe, and on 
one of them the rust of consumed iron, have 
been discovered between ninety and a hun- 
dred feet below the present surface of the 
earth. This is a proof, by the by, not only 
that this immense depth of soil has been accu- 
mulated in that quarter ; but that that new 
country^ as the inhabitants of the Atlantick 
states call it, is, indeed a very ancient one ;- 
and that North America has undergone more 



36 THE BRITISH SPY. 

revolutions in point of civilization, than have 
heretofore been thought of, either by the Eu- 
ropean or American philosophers. That part 
of this continent, which borders on the wes- 
tern ocean, being almost entirely unknown, 
it is impossible to say whether it exhibit the 
same evidence of immersion which is found 
here. M'Kenzie, however, the only traveller 
who has ever penetrated through this vast 
forest, records a curious tradition among some 
of the western tribes of Indians : to wit, that 
the world was once covered with water. The 
tradition is embellished, as usual, with a num- 
ber of very highly poetical fictions. The fact, 
which I suppose to be couched under it, is the 
ancient submersion of that part of the conti- 
nent; which, certainly looks much more like 
a world than the petty territory that was in- 
undated by Eucalion's flood. If I remember 
aright, for I cannot immediately refer to the 
book, Stith, in his history of Virginia, has 



THE BRITISH SPY. 3? 

VTecorded a similar tradition among the Atlan- 
tic ktribes of Indians. I have no doubt that if 
M^Kenzie had been as well qualified for scien- 
tifick research, as he was undoubtedly honest, 
firm and persevering, it would have been in his 
power to have thrown great lights on this 
subject as it relates to the western country. 

For my own part, while I believe the pre- 
sent mountains of America to have constituted 
the original stamina of the continent, I believe 
at the same time, the western as well as the 
eastern country to be the effect of alluvion ; 
produced too by the same causes: the rota- 
tion of the earth, and the planetary attrac- 
tion of the ocean. 

The perception of this will be easy and 
simple, if, instead of confounding the mind, 
by a wide view of the whole continent as it 
now stands, we carry back our imaginations 
to the time of its birth, and suppose some 

one of the highest pinnacles of the Blue 

4 



38 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Ridge to have just emerged above the sur- 
face of the sea. Now whether the rolhng 
of the earth to the east give to the ocean, 
which floats loosely upon its bosom, an ac- 
tual counter-current, to the west,* which is 

« This idea, which is merely stated hypotheUcally^ is 
considered, by the Inquirer, as having been a position abso- 
lutely taken by the British Spy : and as the reverse prin- 
ciple, (to wit, that the motion of the waters is taken from 
and corresponds with that of the soliil earth,) is so well 
estabUshedy he concludes that it must have been contested 
by the British Spy through mere inadvertence. But, 
for my part, I do not perceive how this hypothetical idea 
of the British Spy is, at all, in collision with the doctrine 
of the diurnal or annual revolution of the terraqueous 
globe. 

The British Spy could not have been guilty of so great 
an absurdity as to intend that the waters of the ocean de- 
serted their bed and broke over the eastern coasts and 
lofty mountains of opposing continents, in order to main- 
tain their actual counter-current to the west. It must 
have been clear to him, that the ocean, keeping its bed, 
must attend the motion of the earth, " not only on its 
axis, but in its orbit." But the question here is not as to 



THE BRITISH SPY. o5? 

occasionally, further accelerated by the mo- 
tion of the tides in that direction, or wheth- 
er this be not the case; still to our newly 
emerged pinnacle, which is whirled, by the 

the position of the whole ocean as it relates to the whole 
earth : the question is merely as to the locomotion of the 
particles of the ocean, among themselves. For although 
the ocean, as well as the solid earth, must pei'fovm a com- 
plete revolution around their common axis once in 
twenty-four hours, it does not follow, as I take it, that the 
globu'fs of the fluid ocean must, all this time, remain as 
fixed as the atoms of the solid earth : they certainly may 
and certainly have, from some cause or other, a subordi- 
nate motion among themselves, frequently adverse to the 
general motion of the globe ; to wit, a current to the 
west. The atmosphere belongs as much to this globe as 
the waters of the ocean do : that is to say, it cannot any 
more than the ocean fly off and attach itself to any other 
planet. It feels, like the ocean, the gravitating power of 
the earth and the attraction of the neighboiing j)lanets. 
It is afi'ected, no doubt vei-y sensibly (at least the lower 
region of it) by the earths diurnal rotation, and like the 
ocean, is compelled to attend her in her annual journey 
ground the sun. But what of this ? Does the atmos- 



4@ the; BRITISH SPY. 

earth's motion, through the waters of the 
deep, the consequences will be the same 
as if there were this actual and strong cur- 
rent. For while the waters will be continu- 

phere remain fixed in such a manner, as that the part of 
it, which our antipodes are respiring at this moment, is to 
furnish our diet our pabulum vita twelve hours hence ? 
Certainly not ; the atoms which compose the atmosphere 
are, we know, in spite of the earth's diurnal and an- 
nual motion, agitated and impelled in every direction; 
and so also, we equally well know, are the waters of the 
ocean. 

If the Inquirer, when he says that "the motion of the 
earth is cor;;municated to every part of it, whether solid 
or fluid," intend that the motion of the loose and fluid 
particles of the ocean take, from the earth, a flux among 
themselves to the east, the result would be an actual cur- 
rent to the east ; which is not pretended. If he mean, 
that the globules of the ocean, unafi^ected by any other 
cause tiiun the motion of the earth, would always majn- 
tain the same position in relation to each other, he majj 
indeed, allege a principle which is well established ; but 
as it does not meet the approbation of ray reason, and as 



THE BRITISH SPY, 41 

ally accumulated on the eastern coast of 
this pinnacle, it is obvious that on the west- 
ern coast, (protected, as it would be, from 
the current, by the newly risen earth,) the 

I am not in the habit of reading merely th-at I may under- 
stand and believe. I must beg permission to enter my dis- 
sent to the principle. It avouUI be difficult, if not impossi- 
ble, so close as we are in the neighbourhood of the earth's 
attraction, to invent any apparatus by which a decisive ex- 
periment could be made on this subject. But, by the way 
of iliustralion, let us suppose the earth at rest; let us 
suppose the atmosphere, by the hand of the great chemist 
who raised it into its present aeritorm state, once more 
reduced to a fluid ; let us sup[)ose it, like a great ocean, 
to surround tlie earth within the torrid zone, (partitioned 
at right angles, by two or three mountains running from 
north to south) and all its parts reposing in a lialcyou 
calm : let us then suppose the eartli whirled on its axis to 
the east; what would be the probable effect ? it is clear 
that tlie lower region of this superincumbent ocean would 
be most strongly bound by the eaith's attraction; it Is 
equally clear that the stratunj of globules, immediately in 
contact with the earth, would adhere raox-e strongly there- 
A* 



42 THE BRITISH SPY. 

waters will always be comparatively low and 
calm. The result is clear. The sands, 
borne along by the ocean's current over the 
northern and southern extremities of this 

to, than to the fluid stratum which rested upon it; while 
this adhesion to the surface of the earth would be assisted 
by the many rugged protuberances on that surface. 
Hence the first motioaof the earth, the lowest part of 
this circumambient ocean, being most powerfully attract- 
ed and attached to the earth, would slide under the fluid 
mass above it, and thereb)"^ produce an inequality in the up- 
per surface of the water itself; an elevation in the eastern, 
a concavity in the western side of each partition ; wbile the 
waters, from their tendency to seek their level, would 
strive to restore the balance, by falling constantly from 
east to west. 

Whether this effect would continue for ever, or how 
long it w ould continue in our oceans as they are at present 
arranged, it is not easy to solve. But that a current from 
t];e east to the west would be at first produced, is as evi- 
dent as the light ctf heaven : if it be denied, I demand the 
solution of the following phenomenon : if a plate be filled 
wiijh oil or other fluid, and the plate be then drawn in any 



THE BRfTISH SPY. 43 

pinnacle, will always have a tendency to set- 
tle in the calm behind it ; and thus, by per- 
petual accumulations* form a western coast, 
more rapidly perhaps than an eastern one ; 

direction, how does it happen that tlie fluid will manifest a 
tendency to flow in the opposite direction ; insomuch that 
if the draught of the plate be sudden, the fluid, running 
rapidly over the adverse edge of the plate, shall discharge 
itself completely ; leaving little behind but the inferiour 
stratum ? 1 take it, that the man who solves this pheno- 
menon, satisfactorily, will be compelled to resort to prin- 
ciples, which, when applied to our oceans resting loosely 
as they do on the earth which rolls under them, would in- 
evitably produce a western current; and this current 
once produced it will be difficult to say why and when it 
should cease. A current thus produced would be unequal, 
from the nature of its cause, at various depths : it would 
be subject to temporary affections and alterations near its 
surface, by the winds, the tides and the diversified shapes 
of the coasts on which the ocean rolls. The general ten- 
dency, however, of the great mass of ths waters would be 
to the west. 

I see no souiid reason in renouncing Mr. Uuffbn's the- 
oiy either on account of the eloquent and beautiful man- 



44 THE BRITISH SPY. 

as we may see in miniature, by the capes and 
shallows collected by the still water, on each 
side, at the mouths of creeks, or below rocks, 
in the rapids of a river. 

ner in which it is explained ; nor because it has long had its 
just portion of admirers ; nor because thei'e are other more 
modern theories. A^'hile we are children, it may be well 
enough to lie passively on our liacks and permit others 
to prepare and feed us with the pap of science ; but when 
our own judgments and understandings have gained their 
maturity, it behoves us, instead of being " a feather for 
every wind that blows," instead of floating impotcntly he- 
fore the capricious current o? fashion and opinion, to lieave 
out all our anchors ; to take a position from which nothing 
shall move us but reason and truth, not novelty and fash- 
ion. In the progress of science, many principles, in my 
opinion, have been dropped to make way for others, Avhich 
are newer but less true. And among them Mr. Huffon's 
theory of the earth. The effect of alluvion is so slow, that 
any one generation is almost unable to pei'Ceive the change 
wrought by it ; hence, many people, unable to sit down 
and reflect on the wonders which time can do, fly off" with 
a kind of puerile impatience, and resort to any thing, even 



THE BRITISH SPY, 45 

After this newborn point of earth had 
gained some degree of elevation, it is proba- 
ble that successive coats of vegetation, ac- 
cording to Dr Darwin's idea, springing up, 
then falling and dying on the earth, paid an 
annual tribute to the infant continent, while 

a bouleversemente of a whole continent, rather than to de- 
pend on so slow and imperceptible an operation as that of 
alluvion. Thisis not philosoithical. N either on tlie other 
hand would it be philosophical. to reject a theory because it 
might be new and unsupported by a name. On the contra- 
ry, the man who on any branch of philosophy starts a new- 
hypothesis, which has even the guise of reason, confers a 
benefit on the world; for he enlargesthegi-ound of thought, 
and although not immediately in the temple of truth him- 
self, may have dropped a hint, an accidental clev/, which 
may serve to lead others to the door of the tt mple. In this 
spirit, I not only excuse, but am grateful even for, the 
wildest of Dr. Dai'win's philosophical chimeras. In the 
same spirit, I offer, without the expectation of its fin£tl 
adoption, the idea suggested by this note as to the cause 
of a western current. 



46 THE BRITISH SPY. 

each rain, which fell upon it, bore down a 
part of its substance and assisted perpetu- 
ally in the enlargement of its area. 

It is curious that the arrans^ement of the 
mountains both in North and South A ri eri- 
ca, as well as the shape of the two continents, 
combine to strengthen the preceding theory. 
For the mountains, as you will perceive on in- 
specting your maps, run in chains from north 
to south; thus opposing the widest possible 
barrier to the sands, as they roll from east 
to west. The shape of the continent is just 
that which would naturally be expected from 
such an origin : that is, they lie along, colla- 
terally, with the mountains. As far north as 
the country is weli known, these ranges of 
mountains are observed ; and it is remarka- 
ble, that as soon as the Cordilleras terminate 
in the south, the continent of South America 
ends : where they terminate in the norths the 
continent dwindles to a narrow Isthmus. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 47. 

Assuming this theory as correct, it is amu- 
sing to observe the conclusions to which it 
will lead us. 

As the country is supposed to have been 
formed by gradual accumulations, and as 
these accumulations, were most probably 
equal or nearly so in every part, it follows 
that, broken as this country is in hills and 
dales, it has assumed no new appearance by 
its emersion ; but that the figure of the earth's 
surface is the same throughout, as well where 
it is now covered by the waters of the ocean 
as where it has been already denudated. So 
that Mr, Boyle's mountains in the sea cease to 
have any thing wonderful in them. 

Connected with this, it is not an improbable 
conclusion, that new continents and islands are 
now forming on the bed of the ocean. Per- 
haps, at some future day, lands may emerge 
in the neit^hbourhood of the Antarctic circle, 
which by progressive accumulations and a 



48 THE BRITISH SPY. 

consequent increase of weight, may keep a 
juster balance between the poles, and pro-^ 
(luce a material difference in our astronomi- 
cal relations. The navigators of that day 
will be as successful in their discoveries in 
the southern seas, as Columbus was hereto- 
fore in the northern. For there can be little 
doubt that there has been a time when Co- 
lumbus, if he had lived, would have found 
his reasonings, on the balance of the earth, 
fallacious ; and would have sought these seas 
for a continent, as much in vain, as Drake, 
Anson, Cook and others, encouraged perhaps 
by similar reasoning, have since sought the 
ocean of the south. 

If Mr. Buffon's notion be correct, that the 
eastern coast of one continent is perpetu- 
ally feeding on the western coast of that which 
lies before it, the conclusion is inevitable, that 
the present materials of Europe and Africa, 
and Asia in succession, will at some future day 



<rHE BRITISH SPY. 49 

compose the continents of North and South 
America; while the latter, thrown on the 
Asiatic shore, will again make a part, and, 
in time, the whole of that continent, to which 
by some philosophers, they are supposed to 
have been originally attached. It is equally 
clear that, by this means, the continents will 
not only exchange their materials, but their 
position; so that, in process of time, they 
must respectively make a tour around the 
globe, maintaining, still, the same ceremoni- 
ous distance from each other, which they 
now hold. 

According to my theory, which supposes 
an alluvion on the western as well as the eas- 
tern coast, the continents and islands of the 
earth, will be caused, reciprocally, to approxi- 
mate, and (if materials enough can be found 
in the bed of the ocean, or generated by any 
process of nature) ultimately to unite. Our 
island of Great Britain, therefore, at some 
5 



50 THE BRITISH SPY. 

future day, and in proper person, will proba- 
bly invade the territory of France. In the 
course of this work of alluvion, as it relates 
to this country, the reflugent waters of the 
Atlantick will be forced to recede from Hamp- 
ton Roads and the Chesapeake ; the beds 
whereof will become fertile valleys, or, as they 
are called here, river bottoms; while the 
lands in the lower district of the state, 
which are now only a very few feet above the 
surface of the sea, will rise into majestick 
eminences, and the present sickly site of Nor- 
folk be converted into a high and salubrious 
mountain. I apprehend, however, that the 
present inhabitants of Norfolk would be ex- 
tremely unwilling to have such an effect 
wrought in their day ; since there can be little 
doubt that they prefer their present commer- 
cial situation, incumbered as it is by the annu- 
al visits of the yellow fever, to the elevation 
and health of the Blue Ridge. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 51 

In the course of this process, too, of which 
I have been speaking, if the theory be cor- 
rect, the gulf of Mexico will be eventually 
filled up, and the west India Islands conso- 
lidated with the American continent. 

These consequences, visionary as they may 
now appear, are not only probable ; but, if 
the alluvion which is demonstrated to have 
taken place already, should continue, they 
are inevitable. There is very little probabi- 
lity that the isthmus of Darien, which con- 
nects the two continents, is coeval with the 
Blue Pvidge or the Cordilleras; and it re- 
quires only a continuation of the cause 
which produced the isthmus, to effect the 
repletion of the gulph and the consoiiUation 
of the islands with the continent. 

But when ? I am possessed of no data 
whereby the calculations can be made. The 
depth at which Herculaneum and Pompeia 
were found to be buried in the course of 



52 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sixteen hundred years, affords us no light on 
this inquiry; because their burial was effect- 
ed not by the slow alluvion and accumulation 
of time, but by the sudden and repeated erup- 
tions of Vesuvius. As little are we aided by 
the repletion of the earth around the Tar- 
fieian rock in Rome; since that repletion 
was most probably effected in a very great 
degree, by the materials of fallen buildings. 
And besides, the original height of the rock 
is not ascertained with any kind of precision ; 
historians having, I believe, merely inform- 
ed us, that it was sufficiently elevated to kill the 
criminals who were thrown from its summit. 

But a truce with philosophy. Who could 
have believed that the skeleton of an sun- 
wieldly whale, and a few mouldering teetH 
of a shark, would have led me such a dance ! 

Adieu, my dear S , for the present j 

May the light of Heaven continue to shine 
around you ! 



LETTER III. 

Richmond^ Sefitember 15. 

You inquire into the state of your favourite 

art in Virginia. F.loquence, my dear S , 

has few successful votaries here : I niean 
eloquence of the highest order ; such as that 
to which, not only the bosom of your friend, 
but the feelings of the whole British nation 
bore evidence, in listening to the charge of 
the Begums in the prosecution of Warren 
Hastings. 

In the national and state legislatures, as 
well as at the various bars in the United 
States, I have heard great volubility, much 
o-ood sense, and some random touches of the 
pathetic ; but in the same bodies, I have heard 
a far greater proportion of puerile rant, or 
5* 



54 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tedious and disgusting inanity. Three re- 
marks are true as to almost all their orators. 

First : they have not a sufficient fund of 
general knowledge. 

Secondly : they have not the habit of close 
and solid thinking. 

Thirdly : they do not aspire at original ovr 
naments. 

From these three defects, it most generally 
results, that although they pour out, easily 
enough, a torrent of words, yet these are des- 
titute of the light of erudition, the practical 
utility of just and copious thought, or those 
novel and beautiful allusions and embellish- 
ments, with which the very scenery of the 
country is so highly calculated to inspire them. 

The truth is, my dear S , that this 

scarcity of genuine and sublime eloquence, 
is not confined to the United States : in- 
stances of it in any civilized country have 
always been rare indeed. Mr. Blair is cer- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 55 

tainly correct in the opinion, that a state of na- 
ture is most favourable to the higher efforts 
of the imagination, and the more unrestrained 
and noble raptures of the heart. Civilization, 
wherever it has gained ground, has interwo- 
ven with society a habit of artificial and ela- 
borate decorum, which mixes in every opera- 
tion of life, deters the fancy from every bold 
enterprise, and buries nature under a load of 
hypocritical ceremonies. A man, therefore, 
in order to be eloquent, has to forget the ha- 
bits in which he has been educated ; and ne- 
ver will he touch his audience so exquisitely 
as when he goes back to the primitive sim- 
plicity of the patriarchal age. 

I have said that instances of genuine and 
sublime eloquence have always been rare in 
every civilized country. It is true that Tul- 
ly and Pliny the younger have, in their epis- 
tles, represented Rome, in their respective 
-days, as swarming with orators of the first 



56 THE BRITISH SPY. 

class: yet from the specimens which they 
themselves have left us, I am led to entertain 
a very humble opinion of ancient eloquence. 
Demosthenes we know has pronounced, 
not the chief, but the sole merit of an orator 
to consist in delivery, or as Lord Verulam 
translates it, in action ; and, although I know 
that the world would proscribe it as a lite- 
rary heresy, I cannot help believing Tully*s 
merit to have been principally of that kind. 
For my own part, I confess very frankly, that 
I have never met with any thing of his, which 
has, according to my taste, deserved the name 
of superior eloquence. His style, indeed, is 
pure, polished, sparkling, full and sonorous ; 
and perhaps deserves all the encomiums 
which have been bestowed on it. But an ora- 
tion, certahily, no more deserves the title of 
superior eloquence, because its style is orna- 
mented, than the figure of an Apollo would 
deserve the epithet of elegant, merely from 



THE BRITISH SPY. 5( 

the superiour texture and flow of the drapery. 
In reading an oration, it is the mind to which 
I look. It is the expanse and richness of the 
conception itself, which I regard, and not the 
glittering tinsel wherein it may be attired. 
Tully's orations, examined in this spirit, have, 
with me, sunk far below the grade at which 
we have been taught to fix them. 

It is true, that at school, I learned, like the 
rest of the world, to lisp, " Cicero the orator :** 
but when I grew up and began to judge for- 
myself, I opened his volumes again and look- 
ed in vain for that sublimity of conception, 
which fills and astonishes the mind ; that sim- 
ple pathos which finds such a sweet welcome 
in every breast; or that resistless enthusiasm 
of unaffected passion, which takes the heart 
by storm. On the contrary, let me confess 
to you, that, whatever may be the cause, to me 
he seemed cold and vapid, and uninteresting 
and tiresome : not only destitute of that com- 



58 THE BRITISH SPY. 

pulsive energy of thought which we look for 
in a great man, but even void of the strong, 
rich and varied colouring of a superior fancy. 
His masterpiece of composition, his work, De 
Oratore, is, in my judgment, extremely light 
and unsubstantial ; and in truth is little more 
than a tissue of rhapsodies, assailing the ear 
indeed, with pleasant sounds, but leaving few 
clear and useful traces on the mind. Plutarch 
speaks of his person as all grace, his voice 
as perfect musick, his look and gesture as 
all alive, striking, dignified and peculiarly im- 
pressive ; and I incline to the opinion, that to 
these theatrical advantages, connected with 
the just reliance which the Romans had in his 
patriotism and good judgment, their strong 
interest in the subjects discussed by him, and 
their more intimate acquaintance with the 
idiom of his language, his fame, while living 
arose ; and that it has been, since, propagated 



THE BRITISH SPY. 59 

by the schools on account of the classick 
purity and elegance of his style. 

Many of these remarks are, in my opinion, 
equally applicable to Demosthenes. He de- 
serves, indeed, the distinction of having more 
fire and less smoke than Tully. But in the 
majestick march of the mind, in the force of 
thought, and splendour of imagery, I think, 
both the orators of Greece and Rome eclipsed 
by more than one person within his majesty*s 
dominions. 

Heavens ! how should I be anathematized 
and excommunicated by every pedagogue 
in Great Britain, if these remarks were made 
public ! Spirits of Car and of Ascham ! have 
mercy upon me ! Wo betide the hand that 
plucks the wizard beard of hoary errour ! From 
lisping infancy to stooping age, the reproach- 
es, the curses of the world shall be upon it ! 

—But to you, my dearest S , my 

friend, my preceptor, to you I disclose my 



60 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Opinions with the same freedom, and for the 
same purpose, that I would expose my wounds 
to a surgeon. To you, it is peculiarly proper 
that I should make my appeal on this subject; 
for when eloquence is the theme, your name 
is not far off. 

Tell me, then, you, who are capable of do- 
ing it, what is this divine eloquence ? What 
the charm by which the orator binds the sen- 
ses of his audience ; by which he attunes and 
touches and sweeps the human lyre, with 
the resistless sway and master hand of a Tim- 
otheus ? Is not the whoie mystery compre- 
hended in one word — SYMPATHY ? I mean 
not merely that tender passion which quavers 
the lip and fills the eye of the babe when he 
looks on the sorrows and tears of another; 
but that still more delicate and subtile quality 
by which we passively catch the very colours, 
momentum and strength of the mind, to 
whose operations we are attending; which 



THE BRITISH SPY. 61 

converts every speaker, to whom we listen, 
into a Vrocrustes, and enables him, for the mo- 
ment, to stretch or lop our faculties to fit the 
standard of his own mind. 

This is a very curious subject. I am 
sometimes half inclined to adopt the notion 
stated by our great Bacon in his original and 
masterly treatise on the advancement of lear- 
ning. " Fascination," says he, " is the power 
" and act of imagination intensive upon other 
" bodies than the body of the imaginant ; 
" wherein the school of Paracelsus and the 
*' disciples of pretended natural magick have 
" been so intemperate, as that they have ex- 
" alted the power of the imagination to be 
^* much one with the power of miracle-work- 
" ing faith : others that draw nearer to pro- 
" bability, calling to their view the secret 
*' passages of things and especially of the 
" contagion that passeth from body to body, 
" do conceive it should Hkewise be agreeable 
6 



62 THE BRITISH SPY. 

" to nature, that there should be some irans' 
" missions and operations Jrom spirit to 
** shirit^ ivithout the mediation of the senses '; 
" whence the conceits have grown, now al- 
" most made civil, of the mastering spirit, 
" and the force of confidence, and the like.'* 
This notion is farther explained in his Sylva 
Sylvarum, wherein he tells a story of an Egyp- 
tian soothsayer, who made Mark Anthony 
believe that his genius, which was otherwise 
brave and confident, was, in the presence of 
Octavianus Caesar, poor and cowardly : and 
therefore he advised him to absent himself 
as much as he could and remove far from 
him. It turned out, however, that this sooth- 
sayer was suborned by Cleopatra, who wish- 
ed Anthony's company in Egypt. 

Yet, if there be not something of this secret 
intercourse from spirit to spirit, how does 
it happen that one speaker shall gradually 
invade and benumb all the faculties of my soul 



THE BRITISH SPY. 63 

as if I were handling a torpedo ; while another 
shall awaken and arouse me, like the clangour 
of the martial trumpet ? How does it happen 
that the first shall infuse his poor spirit into 
my system, lethargize my native intellects, 
and bring down my powers exactly to the 
level of his own ? or that the last shall descend 
upon me like an angel of light, breathe new 
energies into my frame, dilate my soul with his 
own intelligence, exalt me into a new and 
nobler region of thought, snatch me from the 
earth at pleasure, and rap me to the seventh 
heaven ? And, what is still more wonderful, 
how does it happen that these different effects 
endure so long after the agency of the speak- 
er has ceased? Insomuch, that if I sit down 
to any intellectual exercise, after listening to 
the first speaker, my performance shall be 
unworthy even of me, and the num-fish vi- 
sible and tangible in every sentence ; whereas, 
if I enter on the same amusement, after ha- 



64 THE BRITISH SPY. 

viiig attended to the last mentioned orator, 
I shall be astonished at the elevation and 
vigour of my own thoughts ; and if I meet, 
accidentally, with the same production, a 
month or two afterwards, when my mind has 
lost the inspiration, shall scarcely recognise 
it for my own work. 

Whence is all this ? To me it would seem 
that it must proceed either from the subtile 
commerce between the spirits of men, which 
lord Verulam notices, and which enables tlie 
speaker, thereby, to identify his hearer with 
himself ; or else that the mind of man posses- 
ses, independently of any volition on the part of 
its proprietor, a species of papillary faculty of 
dilating and contracting itself, in proportion 
to the pencil of the rays of light which the 
speaker throws upon it; which dilatation or 
contraction, as in the case of the eye, cannot 
be immediately and al)ruptly altered* 



THE BRITISH SPY. 65 

Whatever may be the solution, the fact, I 
think, is certainly as I have stated it. And it 
is remarkable that the same effect is produ- 
ced, though perhaps in a less degree, by peru- 
sing books into which different degrees of 
spirit and genius have been infused I am 
acquainted with a gentleman who never sits 
down to a composition, wherein he wishes 
to shine, without previously reading, with in- 
tense application, half a dozen pages of his 
favourite Bolingbroke. Having taken the 
character and impulse of that writer's mind, 
he declares that he feels his pen to flow with 
a spirit not his own ; and that, if, in the course 
of his work, his powers begin to languish, he 
finds it easy to revive and charge them afresh 
from the same never failing source. 

If these things be not visionary, it becomes 
important to a man, for a new reason, what 
books he reads, and what company he keeps, 
since, according to lord Verulam's notion, • 
6* 



66 THE BRITISH SPY. ' 

an influx of the spirits of others may change * 
the native character of his heart and under- 
standing, before he is aware of it; or, accord- 
ing to the other suggestion, he may so habi- 
tually contract the pupil of his mind, as to be 
disqualified for the comprehension of a great 
subject, and fit only for microscopick obser- ' 
vations. Whereas by keeping the company 
and reading the works of men of magnanimity 
and genius only, he may receive their quali- 
ties by subtile transmission, and eventually, 

get the eye, the ardour and the enterprise of 
an eagle. 

But whither am I wandering ? Permit me 
to return. Admitting the correctness of the 
principles formerly mentioned, it would seem 
to be a fair conclusion that whenever an 
orator wishes to know what eflPect he has 
wrought on his audience, he should coolly and 
conscienciously propound to himself this 
question : Have I, myself, throughout my 



THE BRITISH SPY. 6? 

oration, felt those clear and cogent convic- 
tions of judgment, and that pure and ex- 
alted fire of the soul, with which I wished 
to inspire others ? For, he may rely on it, 
that he can no more impart (or to use Ba- 
con's word, transmit) convictions and sen- 
sations which he himself has not, at the 
time, sincerely felt, than he can convey a 
clear title to property, in which he himself 
has no title. 

This leads me to remark a defect which I 
have noticed more than once in this country. 
Following up too closely the cold conceit of 
the Roman division of an oration, the speak- 
ers set aside a particular part of their dis- 
course, usually the peroration, in which, 
they take it into their heads that they will be 
pathetick. Accordingly when they reach 
this part, whether it be prompted by the 
feelings or not, a mighty bustle commences. 
The speaker pricks up his eai-s, erects his 



63 THE BRITISH SPY. 

chest, tosses his arms wtth hysterical vehe- 
mence, and says every thing which he sup- 
poses ought to affect his hearers ; but it is 
all in vain : for it is obvious that every thing he 
says is prompted by the head ; and, however 
it may display his ingenuity and fertility, 
however it may appeal to the admiration of 
his hearers, it will never strike deeper. The 
hearts of the audience will refuse all com- 
merce except with the heart of the speaker ; 
nor, in this commerce, is it possible, by any 
disguise, however artful, to impose false ware 
on them. However the speaker may labour 
to seem to feel, however near he may ap- 
proach to the appearance of the reality, the 
heart nevertheless possesses a keen unerring 
sense, which never fails to detect the impos- 
ture. It would seem as if the heart of man 
stamps a secret mark on all its effusions, 
which alone can give them currency, and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 69 

which no ingenuity, however adroit, can suc- 
cessfully counterfeit. 

I have been not a little diverted, here, in 
listening to some fine orators, who deal almost 
intirely in this pathos of the head. They 
practise the start, the pause — make an im- 
mense parade of attitudes and gestures, and 
seem to imagine themselves piercing the 
heart with a thousand wounds. The heart 
all the time, developing every trek that is 
played to cajole her, and sitting serene and 
composed, looks on and smiles at the ridicu- 
lous pageant as It passes. 

Nothing can, in my o'pinion, be more ill 
judged in an orator, than to indulge himself 
in this idle, artificial parade. It is particularly 
unfortunate in an exordium. It is as much 
as to say caveat auditor ; and for my own 
pan, the moment 1 see an orator rise with 
this menacing majesty ; assume a look of 
solemn wisdom ; stretch, forth his right arm. 



70 THE BRITISH SPY. 

like the ruber? s dexter of Jove; and hear 
him open his throat in deep and tragick tone ; 
I feel myself involuntarily braced and in an 
attitude of defence, as if I were going to take 
a bout with Mendoza. 

/The Virginians boast of an orator^f nature, 
whose manner was the reverse of all this ; 
/ and he is the only orator of whom they do 
boast, with much emphasis. I mean the 
celebrated Patrick Henry, whom I regret 
that I came to this country too late to see. 
I cannot, mdeed, easily forgive him, even in 
the grave, his personal instrumentality in 
separating these fair colonies from Great 
Britain. Yet I dare not withhold, from the 
memory of his talents, the tribute of respect 
to which they are so justly entitled. 

I am told that his general appearance and 
manners were those of a plain farmer or 
planter of the back country ; that, in this 
character, he always entered on the exordium 



THE BRITISH SPY. 71 

of an oration; disqualifying himself, with 
Hooks and expressions of humility so lowly 
and unassuming, as threw every heart off its 
guard and induced his audience to listen to 
him, with the same easy openness with which 
they would converse with an honest neigh- 
bour : but, by and by, when it was little ex- 
pected, he would take a flight so high, and 
blaze with a splendour so heavenly as filled 
them with a kind of religious awe, and gave 
him the force and authority of a prophet. » 
You remember this was the manncfPof 
Ulysses ; commencing with the look de- 
pressed and hesitating voice. Yet I dare 
say Mr. Henry was directed to it, not by the 
example of Ulysses, of which it is very pro- 
bable, that, at the commencement of his ca- 
reer, at least, he was entirely ignorant : but 
either that it was the genuine, trembling 
diffidence, without which, if TuIIy may be 
believed, a great orator never rises ; or else 



1% THE BRITISH SPY. 

that he was prompted to it by his own sound 
judgment and his intimate knowledge of the 
human heart. 
I I have seen the skeletons of some of his 
orations. The periods and their members 
are short, quick, eager, palpitating, and are 
manifestly the extemporaneous effusions of 
a mind deeply convinced, and a heart inflam- 
ed with zeal for the propagation of those 
convictions, They afford, however, a very 
inadequate sample of his talents : the steno- 
grapher having never attempted to follow 
him, when he arose in the strength and awful 
majesty of his genius. 

I am not a little surprised to find eloquence 
of this high order so negligently cultivated in 
the United States. Considering what a very 
powerful engine it is in a republick, and how 
peculiarly favourable to its culture, the cli- 
mate of republicks has been always found, 
I expected to have seen in America more 






THE BRITISH SPY. 73 

votaries to Mercury than even to Plutus. 
Indeed it would be so sure a road both to 
vveahh and honours, that if I coveted either, 
and were an American, I would bend all my 
powers to its acquirement, and try whether I 
could not succeed as well as Demosthenes 
in vanquishing natural imperfections. Ah ! 

my dear S , were you a citizen of 

this country ! You, under the influence of 
whose voice a parliament of great Britain 
has trembled and shuddered, while her re- 
fined and enlightened galleries have wept 
and fainted in the excess of feeling ! — what 
might you not accomplish ? But, for the 
honour of my country, I am much better 
pleased that you are a Briton. 

On the subject of Virginian eloquence, 
you shall hear farther from me. In the mean 

time, adieu, my S , my friend, my 

father. 



TO THE EDITOR OF THE VIRGINIA ARGUS. 

Sir, 

As the theory of the earth derives importance 
from its dignity, if not from its utiUty, and 
has of late years given birth to many in- 
genious speculations, I shall offer no apology 
for troubling you with the following remarks, 
which were suggested by an essay, in last 
Wednesday's Argus, entitled " The British 
Spy." 

Sea shells and other marine productions, 
differing in no respect from those which now 
exist in their native element, have been found 
in every explored part of the globe. They 
are found, too, in the highest as well as in 
the lowest situations : on the loftiest moun- 
tains of Europe, and the still loftier Andes 
of South America. To go no farther from 



THE BRITISH SPY. 75 

home, our own Allegany abounds with them. 
How were these substances separated from 
their parent ocean ? Do they still remain 
' in their primitive beds? and has the water 
deserted them ? or have they deserted the 
water .^ These questions, differently answer- 
ed, give rise to different theories. 

Among these theories, that of the Count 
de Buffon stands conspicuous. Adorned with 
all the graces of style, and borrowing a lustre 
from his other splendid productions, it has 
long had its full share of admirers. After 
exhibiting new proofs of a former submersion, 
in which he discovers great ingenuity, and is 
certainly entitled to great praise, he pro- 
ceeds to account for the earth in its present 
form, by a natural operation of the ocean 
which covered it. This hypothesis, which 
the British Spy has partially adopted, is liable 
to many objectionsj which, to me at least, 



76 THB BRITISH SPV. 

are insuperable. I will briefly notice some 
of the most obvious. 

Although alluvion may account for small 
accessions of soil nearly on a level with the 
ocean, it cannot explain the formation of 
mountains. It is contrary to all the known 
laws of nature to suppose that a fluid could 
lift, so far above its own level, bodies many 
times heavier than itself. 

Again, if the ocean, as Buffbn maintains, 
have a tendency to wear away all points and 
emhiences over which it passes, it would 
exert this tendency on the mountains itself 
had formed ; or rather, it would prevent 
their formation. It is surely inconsistent to 
suppose the ocean would produce mountains, 
and at the same time wear away those that 
already existed. Indeed, the author himself 
seemed to be aware of the in"incible objec- 
tions to this part of his theory, and endeavours 
to evade their force by sinking a purt of the 



THE BRITISH SPY. Tf 

earth, in the cavity occasioned by which, the 
superfluous waters find a sufficient recepta- 
cle ; thus abandoning the agency of alluvion, 
and adopting a new and totally different hy- 
pothesis. 

But while marine substances are found far 
above their proper element, vegetable bo- 
dies are often found far below the seat of their 
production. In Europe they often meet with 
wood, at great depths of the earth, in a state 
of perfect preservation, and in sinking wells, 
in this country, trunks of trees frequently ob- 
struct the progress of the work. A Mr. 
Peters, of Harrison county, not long since, 
met with pieces of pine, twenty feet below 
the surface, on a hill of considerable eleva- 
tion, and at a distance from any water-course. 
In this town, leaves, believed to be those of 
the hazle, were found mingled with marine 
productions. These vegetable matters must 
have been once exposed to air, heat and 

7* 



78 THE BRITISH SPY. 

light, to have attained the state in which they 
were found; and the same exposure would 
have afterwards caused their decay, unless 
their interment had been sudden and com- 
plete. Bones, shells and other extraneous 
substances, are often found bedded in marble 
and other hard bodies; and I myself have 
seen a specimen of those human bones, 
which in the fortifications of Gibraltar are of- 
ten found incorporated with the solid rock. 
What less than some great throe of nature, 
or some mighty agent, now dormant and un- 
known, could have produced the general 
bouleversement which these appearances in- 
dicate ? 

But the hypothetical reasoning of Monsieur 
de Buffon is founded on a fact no less hypo- 
thetical. The arguments, in favour of a ge- 
neral current to the west, are I confess, very 
cogent, and would be convincing but for the 
following difficulties. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 79 

1. If the operation of the sun and moon, 
in producing alternate elevations and depres- 
sions of the ocean, produce also a current, 
the force of this current will be in pro- 
portion to the mass of water thus raised and 
depressed. Now, contrary to the assertion 
of Baffon, the tides are highest in high la- 
titudes, and gradually diminish towards the 
equator; where I believe they hardly ex- 
ceed a foot. By the observations of Cap- 
tain Cook, the same difference exists in the 
Pacifick ocean as was long known in the 
Atlantick. If then there be a general current 
to the west, it should be strongest in high 
latitudes and weakest under the line. But the 
contrary is the fact. No general current to 
the west is found without the tropicks ; and 
that which prevails irregularly between them 
is usually and rationally ascribed to the trade 
winds. 



80 THE BRITISH SPY. 

2. If this supposed current existed, its 
effect would be readily perceived by our na- 
vigators in the difference of their passages to 
and from Europe; but, the one before re- 
ferred to excepted, they meet with nothing of 
the kind. A current, at the rate of one 
mile an hour, would make a difference of 
near two thousand miles between an ordinary 
voyage to. and from Europe. 

3. By actual observations, detailed in the 
second volume of the Philosophical Trans- 
actions, the prevailing currents about some 
islands in the Atlantick Ocean are to the east. 
At Owhyhee, which lies within the tropicks, 
and nearly in the middle of the Pacifick 
Ocean, Captain Cook observed the current 
to set, without any regularity, sometimes to 
the west and sometimes to the east. 

4. But one argument may be deemed 
conclusive. The air is a fluid at least as sen- 
sible to the gravitating power of the planet 



THE BRITISH SPY. 81 

as the Ocean, and like that, must also have 
its tides. If, on the one hand, the tides of 
the air are more liable, to be disturbed by its 
compressibility, by partial rarefaction or con- 
densation, its obstacles, on the other hand, to 
a free motion round the earth, are compa- 
ratively inconsiderable. Its course is some- 
what impeded, but never arrested. If then 
such a general law existed, as is contended 
for, there would be, either a steady east wind, 
or greater flow of air from that quarter than 
from the west, in every climate of the globe. 
But this is the case only between the tropicks; 
and the prevalence of the east wind, in that 
region, has been almost universally ascribed 
to rarefaction by heat, since no other solu- 
tion can account for the sea and land breezes, 
monsoons, and other phenomena of those 
climates. 

From these considerations I am disposed 
to think, that there is no uniform current to 



82 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the west ; or that it is too inconsiderable to 
have any effect on the figure of the earth. 
Admitting the existence of a general current, 
it may be merely superficial. Currents, 
whose force gradually diminishes from the ,. 
surface downwards, are known to exist; and ; 
the practice of seamen, when they wish " to 
try the current," is evidently founded on the 
belief that they do not extend to great depths. 
The accession of water by the tides is too 
small to require a general movement of the 
ocean to its bottom. 

In weighing the probability of a general 
current to the west, I have confined myself 
to the operation of the tides; as the mere mo- 
tion of the earth, either in its orbit,, or on its 
axis, can have no possible effect this way. 
This motion is communicated to every part 
of the earth, whether solid or fluid ; and while 
it continues equable, they are both affected 
alike, and their relative situations remain the 



THE BRITISH SPY. So 

same. So well established a principle must 
have been contested by the British Spy 
through mere inadvertence. 

If, after all that has been said, ar^^uments, 
in favour of a current from the surface to 
the bottom, be deemed conclusive, it is worth 
while to inquire into its probable effects. 

The British Spy supposes that this ge- 
neral current enlarges both the eastern and 
western coast of continents ; in which hypo- 
thesis, he differs less from Buffon than that 
elegant but fanciful theorist differs from him- 
self. For, in his theory on the formation of 
the planets, he advances that the ocean is 
continually wearing away the eastern coasts, 
and by a process, which he does not even 
hint at, enlarging the western ; and that Asia 
is an older country than Europe. But in a 
subsequent work, his Epochs, he maintains 
the direct reverse, and mentions the abrupt- 
ness of the western, and the greater number 



84 THE BRITISH SPY. 

of islands of the eastern coasts, as evidences 
that the former have been abraded by the 
ocean. 

But I find neither reasoning nor fact to 
warrant either of these conclusions. It has 
been observed that a shore forms a convex 
outline where it gains on the ocean, and a 
concave where it loses. On inspecting the 
map of the world, we perceive nothing, which 
by this standard indicates a greater increase 
on one continent than on the other, or even 
any increase at all. We see no vast promi- 
nence of coast under the line ; but on taking 
both shores of the ocean, in both hemisfiheresy 
into comparison, we find that the convexities 
on the western side are balanced by equal con- 
vexities on the eastern. Besides it is clear 
that in proportion as the contents of the 
ocean are cast on the land, in the same de- 
gree it becomes deeper, and its shores more 
steep and abrupt. This is as true of the ocean 



THE BRITISH SPY. 85 

as it is of a ditch. By this increasing declivi- 
ty of growing shores, the additional gravity 
to be overcome will, in time, check the allu- 
vion of any current, however strong. An 
opposite equalizing tendency occurs, where 
the coast is worn away by the ocean. Suc- 
cessive fragments of rocks and precipices, by 
sloping the shore, gradually abate the impe- 
tus of the waters, until the coast attains that 
due inclination by which the gravity to be 
overcome exactly counterbalances the pro- 
jectile force of the ocean. Without doubt, 
small variations continually take place in the 
outline of all coasts ; but the equilibrium for 
which I contend, is founded on correct prin- 
ciples ; and every coast, whether eastern or 
western, approaches to that form, if it have 
not already attained it, when what it loses by 
the ocean will be precisely equal to what it 
gains. 

8 



86 THE BRITISH SPY. 

It should be remarked that Buffon, in his 
last addition to his Theorie, conscious of the 
insufficiency of alluvion in the formation of 
continents, supposes that the cavities, with 
which the earth abounds, are continually fal- 
ling in, and, from the consequent retreat of 
the ocean, that continents are continually ap- 
proximating. This conjecture certainly ren- 
ders his theory more consistent ; but it sub- 
stitutes a cause for the immersion of the earth 
totally different from his first hypothesis of 
alluvion ; and it has been that alone which I 
have considered. This last supposition vs 
merely gratuitous ; as neither observation nor 
history afford us any proofs of the existence 
of these immense caverns, or of any general 
retreat of the ocean. 

For the reasons which I have given, and 
for many more, the theory of this celebrated 
naturalist has long been deemed both impro- 
bable and inadequate, and is now confined to 



THE BKITISH SPY. 87 

the merit, (no small merit by the by) of ha- 
ving collected valuable materials, and detec- 
ted the fallacies of Burnet, Woodward and 
other dreamers on the subject. It has ac- 
cordingly giv en place to new theories, more 
consistent at least, if not more satisfactory. 
Volcanoes, an intense heat in the centre 
of the earth, the recrements of animals and 
vegetables, have been employed, as separate 
or joint agents, by the speculators on this cu- 
rious subject. Dr. Hutton, by far the most 
celebrated of these, supposes the exuvi« of 
sV '' iish to have constituted the basis of the 
earth ; and that it has assumed its present 
form and appearance by the fusion produced 
by the earth's internal heat. He supports 
this opinion by a train of elaborate reasoning, 
and a chemical examination of the bodies 
which compose the outer crust of the earth. 
I regret that I am acquainted with the work 
only at second hand. But I believe that 



THE nillTISH SPY. 



even this theory, ingenious and scientiftck as 
it is, gives little more general satisfaction than 
those which preceded it. It is, in common with 
the other late hypothesis, opposed by the fine 
reasoning of Buffon, in favour of the imme- 
diate action of water in producing the cor- 
respondent angles of mountains, their waving 
outline, parallel strata, &c, as well as by 
many of the facts I have glanced at; audit 
is, moreover, said to be contradicted by some 
chemical experiments, at once pertinent and 
clear. 

On the whole, then, I fear we have not yet 
arrived at that certainty which will satisfy the 
inquirer who is neither enamoured with the 
fancies of his own brain, nor seduced by the 
eloquence of others ; and therefore, to use 
the words of an elegant writer of our own 
country, who discovers the same acuteness, 
the same philosophick caution on this as on 
other occasions, " we must be contented to 



THE BRITISH SPY. 89 

" acknowledge that this great phenomenon is, 
" yet, unsolved. Ignorance is preferable to 
" errour ; and he is less remote from the truth 
" who believes nothing, than he who believes 
" what is wrong.'* 

Before we can obtain a sober conviction on 
the subject, or even properly compare the 
probability of the respective theories, many 
questions now contested must be settled ; new 
facts must be discovered ; new powers of na- 
ture developed. 

How far does the power of aqueous solution 
and of crystallization extend ? Does the earth 
borrow all its heat from the sun ? or has it a 
perennial source in its own bowels ? are there 
general currents in the ocean ? If so, what are 
their courses, periods and strength ? It is clear 
that every rain that falls, every wind that 
blows, transports some portion of the earth 
we inhabit to the ocean. Is there any se- 
cret and magical process in nature, as some 
8* 



90 THE BRITISH SPY. 

have supposed, by which this perpetual waste 
is perpetually repaired ? and do mouniains re- 
ceive accessions by rain, by attraction, or any 
other mode equal to what they evidently lose ? 
Again, water is converted into vegetables, ve- 
getables into animals, and both of these again 
into earth. Is this same earth reconverted 
into water, and by one unvaried round of 
mutation, each preserved in its present pro- 
portion to all eternity ^ 

Science, with an ardour of inquiry never 
before known, and a daily increase of materi- 
als, advances with hasty steps to answer these 
preliminary questions; but till they are sol- 
ved, I incline to think that every theory is 
premature, and shall, therefore, remain satis- 
fied with the safe, but humble character of 

AN INQUIRER. 



LETTER IV. 

Richmond^ September 22. 

I HAVE just returned, my dear S , from 

an interestiug morning's ride. My object 
was to visit the site of the Indian town, Pow- 
hatan; which you will remember was the 
metropolis of the dominions of Pocahuntas' 
father, and, very probably, the birthplace of 
that celebrated princess. 

The town was built on the river, about two 
miles below the ground now occupied by Rich- 
mond : that is, about two miles below the head 
of tide water. The land whereon it stood is, 
at present, part of a beautiful and valuable 
farm belonging to a gentleman by the name 
of William Mayo. 

Aware of the slight manner in which the 
Indians have always construced their habi- 



92 THE BRITISH SPY, 

tations, I Was not at all disappointed in finding 
no vestige of the old town. But as I travers- 
ed the ground over which Pocahuntas had so 
often bounded and frolicked in the sprightly 
morning of her youth, I could not help re- 
calling the principal features of her history, 
and heaving a sigh of mingled pity and vene- 
ration to her memory. 

Good Heaven ! What an eventful life was 
hers! To speak of nothing else, the arrival 
of the English in her father's dominions must 
have appeared (as indeed it turned out to be) 
a most portentous phenomenon. It is not 
easy for us to conceive the amazement and 
consternation which must have filled her 
mind and that of her nation at the first ap- 
pearance of our countrymen. Their great 
ship, with all her sails spread, advancing in 
solemn majesty to the shore; their com- 
plexion ; their dress ; their language ; their 
domestick animals ; their cargo of new and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 93 

glittering wealth ; and then the thunder and 
irresistible force of their artillery ; the distant 
country announced by them, far beyond the 
great water, of vyhich the oldest Indian had 
never heard; or thought, or dreamed — all 
this was so new; so wonderful, so tremen- 
dous, that I do seriously suppose, the per- 
sonal descent of an army of Milton's celestial 
angels, robed in light, sporting in the bright 
beams of the sun and redoubling their splen- 
dour, making divine harmony with their 
golden harps, or playing with the bolt and 
chasing the rapid Hghtning of heaven, would 
excite not more astonishment in Great Bri- 
tain than did the debarkation of the English 
among the aborigines of Virginia, 

Poor Indians ! Where are they now ? In- 
deed, my dear S ., this is a truly afflict- 
ing consideration. The people here may 
say what they please ; but, on the principles 
of eternal truth and justice, they have no 



94 THE BRITSH SPY. 

right to this country. They say that they' 
have bought it— bought it ! Yes ; — of whom 
Of the poor trembling natives who knew that 
refusal would be vain ; and who strove to 
make a merit of necessity by seeming to 
yield with grace, what they knew that they 
had not the power to retain. Such a bargain 
might appease the conscience of a gentleman 
of the green bag, " worn and hackneyed" in 
the arts and frauds of his profession; but 

in heaven's chancery, my S , there can 

be little doubt that it has been long since set 
aside on the ground of duress. 

Poor wretches ! No wonder that they are 
so implacably vindictive against the white 
people ; no wonder that the rage of resent- 
ment is handed down from generation to 
generation ; no wonder that they refuse to 
associate and mix permanently with their 
unjust and cruel invaders and exterminators ; 
no wonder that in the unabating spite and 



THE BRITISH SPY. 95 

frenzy of conscious impotence, they wage an 
eternal war, as well as they are able ; that they 
triumph in the rare opportunity of revenge ; 
that they^ dance, sing^ and rejoice, as the vic- 
tim shrieks and faints amid the flames, when 
they imagine all the crimes of their oppres- 
sors collected on his head, and fancy the spirits 
of their injured forefathers hovering over the 
scene, smiling with ferocious delight at the 
grateful spectacle, and feasting on the pre- 
cious odour as it arises from the burning blood 
of the white man. 

Yet the people, here, affect to wonder that 
the Indians are so very unsusceptible of civi- 
lization ; or, in other words, that they so ob- 
stinately refuse to adopt the manners of the 
white men. Go, Virginian; erase, from 
the Indian nation, the tradition of their 
wrongs; make them forget, if you can, that 
once this charming country was theirs ; that 
over these fields and through these forests 



96 THE BRITISH SPT. 

their beloved forefathers, once, in careless 
gaiety, pursued their sports and hunted their 
gathe ; that every returning day found them 
the sole, the peaceful, the happy proprietors 
of this extensive and beautiful domain. 
Make them forget too, if you can, that in 
the midst of all this innocence, simplicity and 
bliss — the white man came ; and lo ! — the * 
animated chase, the feast, the dance, the song 1 
of fearless, thoughtless joy were over ; that ' 
ever since, they have been made to drink of 
the bitter cup of humiliation ; treated like 
dogs ; their lives, their liberties, the sport of 
the white men ; their country and the graves 
of their fathers torn from them, in cruel suc- 
cession: until, driven from river to river, 
from forest to forest, and through a period of 
two hundred years, rolled back, nation upon 
nation, they find themselves fugitives, va- 
grants and strangers in their own country, 
and look forward to the certain period VTbeii 



THE BRITISH SPY. 97 

Iheir descendants will be totally extinguished 
by wars, driven at the point of the bayonet 
into the western ocean, or reduced to a fate 
i still more deplorable and horrid, the condition 
I of slaves. Go, administer the cup of ob- 
! livion to recollections and anticipations like 
these, and then you will cease to complain 
I that the Indian refuses to be civilized. But 
until then, surely it is nothing wonderful 
that a nation even yet bleeding afresh, from 
I the memory of ancient wrongs, perpetually 
j agonized by new outrages, and goaded into 
I desperation and madness at the prospect of 
the certain ruin which awaits their descend- 
ants, should hate the authors of their mise- 
ries, of their desolation, their destruction; 
should hate their manners, hate their colour, 
their language, their name, and every thing 
that belongs to them. No ; never, until time 
shall wear out the history of their sorrows 

and their sufferings, will the Indian be 
9 



98 THE BRITISH SPY. 

brought to love the white man, and to imitate 
his manners. 

Great God ! To reflect, my S , 

that the authors of all these wrongs were our 
own countrymen, our forefathers, professors 
of the meek and benevolent religion of Jesus ! 
OI it was impious; it was unmanly; poor 
and pitiful! Gracious Heaven! what had 
these poor people done.^ The simple inhabi- 
tants of these peaceful plains, what wrong, 
what injury had they offered to the English r 
My soul melts with pity and shame. 

As for the present inhabitants, it must be 
granted that they are comparatively innocent : 
unless indeed they also have encroached un- 
der the guise of treaties, which they them- 
selves have previously contrived to render 
expedient or necessary to the Indians. 

Whether this have been the case or not, I 
am too much a stranger to the interior trans- 
actions of this country to decide. But it 



THE BRITISH SPY. 99 

seems to me that were I a president of the 
United States, I would glory in going to 
the Indians, throwing myself on my knees be- 
fore them, and saying to them, " Indians, 
" friends, brothers, O ! forgive my country- 
" men ! Deeply have our forefathers wronged 
** you ; and they have forced us to continue 
*^ the wrong. Reflect brothers ; it was not 
" our fault that we were born in your country; 
'* but now we have no other home ; we have 
** no where else to rest our feet. Will you not, 
'* then, permit us to remain Can you not for-' 
" give even us, innocent as we are ? If you can, 
•' O ! come to our bosoms; be, indeed, our 
" brothers ; and since there is room enough 
*' for us all, give us a home in your land, and 
" let us be children of the same affectionate fa- 
" mily.'* I believe that a magnanimity of senti- 
ment like this, followed up by a correspondent 
greatness of conduct on the part of the peo- 



100 THE BRITISH SPY. 

pie of the United States, would go far- 
ther to burv the tomahawk and produce 
a fraternization with the Indians, than 
all the presents, treaties and missiona- 
ries that can be employed ; dashed and de- 
feated as these latter means always are, by 
a claim of rights on the part of the white 
people which the Indians know to be false 
and baseless. Let me not be told that the 
Indians are too dark and fierce to be affected 
by generous and noble sentiments. I will 
not believe it. Magnanimity can never be 
lost on a nation which has produced an 
Alknomok, a Logan, and a Pocahuntas. 

The repetition of the name of this amia- 
ble princess brings me back to the point 
from which I digressed. I wonder that 
the Virginians, fond as they are of anniversa- 
ries, have instituted no festival or order ia 
honour of her memory. For my own part, 
I have little doubt, from the histories which 



THE BRITISH SPY. 10 1 

we have of the first attempts at colonising 
their country, that Pocahuntas deserves to be 
considered as the patron deity of the enter- 
prise. When it is remembered how long 
the colony struggled to get a footing; how 
often sickness or famine, neglect at home, 
mismanagement here, and the hostilities of 
the natives, brought it to the brink of ruin ; 
through what a tedious lapse of time, it alter- 
nately languished and revived, sunk and rose, 
sometimes hanging like Addison's lamp, 
" quivering at a point," then suddenly shoot- 
ing up into a sickly and shortlived flame ; in 
one word, when we recollect how near and 
how often it verged towards total extinction, 
maugre the patronage of Pocahuntas ; there 
is the strongest reason to believe that, but 
for her patronage, the anniversary cannon 
of the fourth of July would never have 
resounded throughout the United States. 
9» 



102 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Is it not probable, that this sensible and 
amiable woman, perceivini^ the superiority 
of the Europeans, foreseeing the probability 
of the subjugation of her countrymen, and 
anxious as well to soften their destiny, 
as to save the needless effusion of human 
blood, desired, by her marriage with Mr. 
Rolfe, to hasten the abolition of all distinction 
between Indians and white men; to bind 
their interests and affections by the nearest 
and most endearing ties, and to make them 
regard themselves, as one people, the chil- 
dren of the same great family? If such were 
her wise and benevolent views, and I have no 
doubt but they were, how poorly were they 
backed by the British court? No wonder at the 
resentment and indignation with which she 
saw them neglected ; no wonder at the bitter- 
ness of the disappointment and vexation 
which she expressed to captain Smith, in 



THE BRITISH SPY. 103 

London, arising; as we!l from th" cold rtcep- 
tion which she herself had met, aS from the 
contemptuous anu insulting j oini of view in 
which she found that her nation was re- 
garded. 

Unfortunate princess ! She deserved a 
happier fate ! But I am consoled by these 
reflections: first, tliat she sees her descen- 
dants among the most respectable fa- 
milies in Virginia; and that they ^re not 
only superiour to the false shame of disavow- 
ing her as their ancestor; but that they pride 
themselves, and with reason too, on the ho- 
nour of their descent ; secondly, that she 
herself has gone to a country, where she 
finds her noble wishes realized ; where the 
distinction of colour is no more ; but where 
indeed, it is perfectly immaterial " what com- 
" plexion an Indian or an African sun may 
" have burned'* on the pilgrim. 



104 THE BRITISH SPY. 



Adieu, .my dear S This train of 

thought has destroyed the tone of my spirits; 
when I recover them you shall hear farther 
from me. Once more, adieu. 



LETTER V * 

Richmond^ September 23. 

This town, my dear S , is the resi- 
dence of several conspicuous characters; some 
of whose names we have heard on the other 
side of the atlantick. You shall be better ac- 
quainted with them before we finish this cor- 
respondence. For the present, permit me 

to introduce to your acquaintance, the 

of the commonwealth of Virgmia, and the 
of the United States. 

• The donee of the manuscript begs that he may not be 
considered as responsible for the accuiacy with which cer- 
tain characters are delineated in this letter. He selects 
it purely for the advantage which, he supposes, youthful 
readers may derive from the writer's reflections oh the 
eharaeters attempted to be drawn by hipa. 



106 THE BRITISH SPY. 

These gentlemen are eminent political op- 
ponents; the first belonging to the republi- 
can, the latter leading the van of the fede- 
ral, party Such is the interest which they 
both have in the confidence and affections of 
their respective parties, that it would 
be difficult, if not impossible, for any Virgi- 
nian to delineate either of their characters 
jusdy. Friendship or hostility would be al- 
most sure to overcharge the picture. But 
for me, I have so little connexion with t^is 
country, or her concerns, either at present ar 
in prospect, that I believe I can look on her 
most exalted characters without envy, or pre- 
judice of any kind ; and draw them with the 
same cool and philosophick impartiality, as if 
I were a sojourner from another planet. If 
I fail in the delineation, the fault must be in 
the hand or in the head, in the pencil or the 
judgment : and not in any prepossession near 
my heart. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 107 

I choose to bring those two characters, 
before you, together; because they exhibit, 
with great vivacity, an intellectual Phenoine- 
noriy which 1 have noticed more than once 
before; and in the solution of which I should 
be pleased to see your pen employed : I mean 
the very different celerity in the movement of 
two sound minds, which on all subjects, 
wherein there is no mixture of party zeal, 
will ultimately come to the same just conclu- 
sion. What a pity it is, that Mr. Locke, 
while he was dissecting the human under- 
standing, with such skill and felicity, did not 
advert to this characteristick variance in 
the minds of men. It would have been in 
his power, by developing its causes either to 
point to the remedy, if it exist at all, or to 
relieve the man of slow mind, from the labour 
of fruitless experiments, by showing the to- 
tal impracticability of his cure. But, to our 
gentlemen ; and in order that you may know 



108 THE BRITISH SPY. 

them the more intimately, I will endeavour to 
prefix to each character a portrait of the per- 
son. 

The of this commonwealth is the 

same who was, not many years 

ago, the at Paris. His present office 

is sufficient evidence of the estimation in 
which he is held by his native state. In his 
stature, he is about the middle height of men, 
rather firmly set, with nothing farther remark- 
able in his person, except his muscular com- 
pactness and apparent ability to endure labour. 
His countenance, when grave, has rather the 
expression of sternness and irascibility: a 
smile however (and a smile is not unusual 
with him in a social circle) lights it up to very 
high advantage, and gives it a most impres- 
sive and engaging air of suavity and benevo- 
lence. Judging merely from his counten- 
ance, he is between the ages of forty -five and 
fifty years. His dress and personal appear- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 109 

ance are those of a plain and modest gentle- 
man. He is a man of soft, polite and even 
assiduous attentions ; but these, although they 
are always well timed, judicious, and evident- 
ly the offspring of an obliging and philanthro- 
pic k temper, are never performed with the 
striking and captivating graces of a Marlbo- 
rough or a Bolingbroke. To be plain, there 
is often in his manner an inartificial and even 
an awkward simplicity, which, while it pro- 
vokes the smile of a more polished person, 

forces him to the opinion that Mr is a 

man of a most sincere and artless soul. 

Nature has given him a mind neither ra- 
pid nor rich ; and therefore, he cannot shine 
on a subject which is entirely new to him. 
But to compensate him for this, he is endued 
with a spirit of generous and restless emula- 
tion, a judgment solid, strong and clear, and 
a habit of application, which no difficulties can 

shake j no labours can tire. 
10 



1 10 THE BRITISH SPY. 

With these aids, simply, he has qualified 
himself for the first lionours of this country; 
and presents a most happy illustration of the 
truth of the maxim, Quisque^ su<e fortuTKC, 
faber. For his emulation has urged him to 
perpetual and unremitting inquiry; his pa- 
tient and \mwearied industry has concentrated 
before him all the lights which others have 
thrown on the subjects of his consideration, 
together with all those which his own mind, 
by repeated efforts, is enabled to strike ; 
while his sober, steady and faithful judgment 
has saved him from the common errour of 
more quick and brilliant geniuses; the too 
hasty adoption of specious, but false conclu- 
sions. 

These qualities render him a safe and an 
able counsellor. And by their constant exer- 
tion, he has amassed a store of knowledge, 
which, having passed,seven times, through the 
crucible, is almost as highly corrected, as hu- 



THE BRITISH SPY. I 11 

man knowledge can be; and which certainly, 
may be much more safely relied on than the 
spontaneous and luxuriant growth of a more 
fertile, but less chastened mind — " a wild, 
where weeds and flowers promiscuous shoot." 
Having engaged very early, first in the life 
of a soldier, then of a statesman, then of a la- 
borious practitioner of the law, and finally, 
again of a politician, his intellectual operations 
have been almost entirely confined to juridi- 
cal and political topicks. Indeed, it is easy to 
perceive, that the mind of a man. engaged in 
so active a life, must possess more native 
suppleness, versatility and vigour, than that of 
Mr , to be able to make an advan- 
tageous tour of the sciences in the rare inter- 
val of importunate duties. It is possible that 
the early habit of contemplating subjects as 
expanded as the earth itself, with all the rela- 
tive interests of the great nations thereof, may 
have inspired him with an indifference, per- 



112 THE BRITISH SPY. 

haps an inaptitude, for mere points of litera- 
ture. Algernon Sidney has said that he deems 
all studies unworthy the serious regard of a 
man, except the study of the principles of 

just government ; and Mr , perhaps, 

concurs with our countrymen in this as well 
as in his other principles. Whatever may 
have been the occasion, his acquaintance with 
the fine arts is certainly very limited and su- 
perficial : but, making allowances for his bias 
towards republicanism, he is a profound and 
even an eloquent statesman. 

Knowing him to be attached to that politi- 
cal party, who, by their opponents, are 
called sometimes democrats, sometimes jaco- 
bins ; and aware also, that he was d man of 
warm and even ardent temper, I dreaded 
much, when I first entered his company, that 
I should have been shocked and disgusted 
with the narrow, virulent and rancourous in- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 113 

vectives of party animosity,* How agreea- 
bly, how delightfully, was I disappointed! 
Not one sentiment of intolerance polluted his 
lips. On the contrary, whether they be the 
offspring of rational induction, of the habit 
of sur'eying men and things on a great scale, 
of native magnanimity, or of a combination 
of all those causes, his principles, as far as 
they were exhibited to me, were forbearing, 
liberal, widely extended and great. 

As the elevated ground, which he already 
holds, has been gained merely by the dint of 
application; as every new step which he 
mounts becomes a mean of increasing his 
powers still farther, by opening a wider hori- 
zon to his view, and thus stimulating his en- 
terprise afresh, reinvigorating his habits, 
multiplying the materials and extending the 

• The cloven foot of the Briton is visible ; or, else, why 
from the premises could he have expected such a conse- 
quence i 

10* 



114 THE BRITISH SPY. 

range of his knowledge ; it would be matter of 
no surprise to me, if, before his death, the 
world should see him at the head of the Ame- 
rican administration. So much for the 

of the commonwealth of Virginia ; a livintj;, 
an honourable, an illustrious monument of 
self created eminence, worth and greatness ! 

Let us now change the scene and lead for- 
ward a very different character indeed : a tru- 
ant, but a highly favoured pupil of nature. 
It would seem as if this capricious goddess 
had finished the two characters, purely with 
the view of exhibiting a vivid contrast. Nor 
is this contrast confined to their minds. 

The of the United States 

is in his person, tall, meagre, emaciated ; his 
muscles relaxed, and his joints so loosely con- 
nected, as not only to disqualify him, appa- 
rondy, for any vigorous exertion of body, but 
to destroy every thing like elegance and har- 
mony in his air and movements. Indeed, in 



THE BRITISH SPY. 1 1 5 

his whole appearance, and demeanour; dress, 
attitudes, gesture : sitting, standing or walk- 
ing ; he is as far removed from the idolized 
graces of lord Chesterfield, as any other gen- 
tlem.an on earth. To continue the portrait: 
his head and face are small in proportion to 
his height ; his complexion swarthy ; the mus- 
cles of his face, being relaxed, give him the 
appearance of a man of fifty years of age, 
nor can he be much younger ; his counte- 
nance has a faithful expression of great good 
humour and hilarity ; while his black eyes— 
that unerring index — possess an irradiating 
spirit, which proclaims the imperial powers 
of the mind that sits enthroned within. 

This extraordinary man, without the aid of 
fancy, without the advantages of person, 
voice, attitude, gesture, or any of the orna- 
ments of an orator, deserves to be considered 
as one of the most eloquent men in the world; 
if eloquence may be said to consist in the 



1 16 THE BRITISH SPY. 

power of seizing the attention with irresisti- 
ble force, and never permitting it to elude the 
grasp, until the hearer has received the con- 
viction which the speaker intends. 

As to his person, it has already been de- 
scribed. His voice is dry, and hard ; his atti- 
tude, in his most effective orations, was often 
extremely awkward ; as it was not unusual 
for him to stand with his left foot in advance 
while all his gesture proceeded from his right 
arm, and consisted merely in a vehement, 
perpendicular swing of it, from about the ele- 
vation of his head, to the bar, behind which 
he was accustomed to stand. 

As to fancy, if she hold a seat in his mind 
at all, which I very much doubt, his gigan- 
tick genius tramples with disdain, on all her 
flower-decked plats and blooming parterres. 
How then, you will ask, with a look of incre- 
dulous curiosity, how is it possible, that such 
a man can hold the attention of an audience 



THE BRITISH SPY. il7 

inchained, through a speech of even ordinary 
length ? I will tell you. 

He possesses one original, and, almost, 
supernatural faculty: the faculty of develo- 
ping a subject by a single glance of his mind, 
and detecting at once, the very point on which 
every controversy depends. No matter, 
what the question : though ten times more 
knotty than "the gnarled oak," the lightning 
of heaven is not more rapid nor more resist- 
less, than his astonishing penetration. Nor 
does the exercise of it seem to cost him an 
efibrt. On the contrary, it is as easy as visi- 
on. I am persuaded that his eyes do not fly 
over a landscape and take in its various ob- 
jects with more promptitude and facility, 
than his mind embraces and analyses the 
inost complex subject. 

Possessing while at the bar this intellectual 
elevation, 'which enabled him to look down 
and comprehend the whole ground at once^ 



I 18 THE BRITISH SPY. 

he deteri-nined immediately and without dif- 
ficulty, on which side the question might be 
most advantageously approached and as- 
sailed. In a bad cause his art consisted in 
laying his premises so remotely from the 
point directly in debate, or else in terms so 
general and so specious, that the hearer, see- 
ing no consequence which could be drawn 
from them, was just as willing to admit them 
as not ; but his premises once admitted, the 
demonstration, however distani, followed as 
certainly, as cogently, as inevitably, as any 
demonstration in Euclid. 

All his eloquence consists in the apparently 
deep self conviction, and emphatick earnest- 
ness of his manner ; the correspondent sim- 
plicity and energy of his style ; the close 
and logical connexion of his thoughts; and 
the easy gradations by whicii he opens his 
lights on the attentive minds of his hearers. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 1 19 

The audience are never permitted to pause 
for a moment. There is no stopping to weave 
garlands of flowers, to hang in festoons, 
around a favourite argument. On the contra- 
ry, every sentence is progressive ; every idea 
sheds new light on the subject ; the listener 
is kept perpetually in that sweetly pleasura- 
ble vibration, with which the mind of man al- 
ways receives new truths; the dawn advances 
in easy but unremitting pace; the subject 
opens gradually on the view ; until, rising, in 
high relief, in all its native colours and pro- 
portions, the argument is consummated, by 
the conviction of the delighted hearer. 

The success of this gentleman has render- 
ed it doubtful with several literary characters 
in this country, whether a high fancy be of 
real use or advantage to any one but a poet. 
They contend, that although the most beauti- 
ful flights of the happiest fancy, interspersed 
through an argument, may give an audience 



120 THE BRITISH SPY. 

the momentary delightful swell of admira- 
tion, the transient thrill of divinest rapture ; 
yet, that they produce no lasting effect in for- 
warding the purpose of the speaker ; on the 
contrary, that they break the unity and dis- 
perse the force of an argument, which, other- 
wise, advancing in close array, like the 
phalanx of Sparta, would carry every thing 
before it. They give an instance in the cele- 
brated Curran ; and pretend that his fine fan- 
cy, although it fires, dissolves and even 
transports his audience to a momentary frenzy, 
is a real and a fatal misfortune to his clients ; 
as it calls off the attention of the jurors from 
the intrinsick and essential merits of the de- 
fence ; echpses the justice of the client's 
cause, in the blaze of the advocate's talents; 
induces a suspicion of the guilt which requires 
such a glorious display of refulgence to di- 
vert the inquiry; and substitutes a fruitless 
shortlived ecstasy, in the place of permanent 



THE BRITISH SPY. 121 

and substantial conviction. Hence, they say, 
that the client of Mr Curran is, invariably, 
the victim of the prosecution, which that able 
and eloquent advocate is employed to re- 
sist 

The doctrine, in the abstract, may be true, 
or, as doctor Doubty says, it may not be true; 
for the present, I will not trouble you with 
the expression of my opinion. I fear, 

however, my dear S , that Mr Cur- 

ran's failures may be traced to a cause very 
different from any fault either in the style or 
execution of his enchanting defences: a 

<:ause but I am forgetting that this 

letter has yet to cross the Atlantick.* 

To return to the of the Uni- 
ted States. His political adversaries allege 
that he is a mere lawyer ; that his mind has 
©een so long trammelled by judicial precedent, 

, The sentiment, which is suppressed, seems to wear 

;he lirer\- of Bedford, Moira, and the Prince of WaleSj 
11 



122 THE BRITISH SPV. 

SO long habituated to the quart and tierce of 
forensick digladiation, (as doctor Johnson 
would probably have called ic,) as to be un- 
equal to the discussion of a great question of 
state. Mr. Curran, in his defence of Rowan, 
seems to have sanctioned the probability of 
such an effect from such a cause, when he 
complains of his own mind as having been 
narrowed and circumscribed, by a strict and 
technical adherence to established forms ; but 
in the next breath, an astonishing burst of the 
grandest thought, and a power of compre- 
hension to which there seems to be no earth- 
ly limit, proves that his complaint, as it relates 
to himself, is intirely without foundation. 

Indeed, if the objection to 

mean any thing more than that he has not 
had the same illumination and exercise in 
matters of state as if he had devoted his life 
to them, I am unwilling to admit it. The 
force of a cannon is the same, whether point- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 123 

ed at a rampart or a man of war, although 
practice may have made the engineer more 
expert in the one case than in the other. So 
it is clear, that practice may give a man a 
greater command oyer one class of subjects 
than another ; but the inherent energy of his 
mind remains the same, whithersoever it may 
be directed. From this impression I have ne- 
ver seen any cause to wonder at what is called 
a universal genius : it proves only that the 
man has applied a powerful mind to the con- 
sideration of a great variety cT subjects, and 
pays a compliment rather to his superiour in- 
dustry, than his superiour intellect. I am ve- 
ry certain that the gentleman, of whom we 
are speaking, possesses the acu7nen which 
might constitute him a universal genius, ac- 
cording to the usual acceptation of the phrase. 
But if he be the truant, which his warmest 
friends represent him to be, there is very lit* 



124 THE BRITISH SPY. 

tie probability that he will ever reach this 
distinction. 

Think ycu, my dear S » that the 

two gentlemen, whom I have attempted to 
portray to you, were, according to the notion 
of Helvetius, born with equal minds ; and 
that accident or education has produced the 
striking difference which we perceive to ex- 
ist between them? I wish it were the case; 
and that the would be pleas- 
ed to reveal to us, by what accident, or what 
system of education, he has acquired his 
peculiar sagacity and promptitude. Until 
this shall be done, I fear I must consider the 
hypothesis of Helvetius as a splendid and flat- 
tering dream. 

But I tire you: — adieu, for the present, 
friend and guardian of my youth. 



LETTER VI. 

Jamestonvny Sefitember 17, 

I HAVE taken a pleasant ride of sixty miles 

down the river, in order, my dear S , 

to see the remains of the first English set- 
tlement in Virginia. 

The site is a very handsome one. The ri- 
ver is three miles broad ; and, on the oppo- 
site shore, the country presents a fine range 
of bold and beautiful hills. But I find no 
vestiges of the ancient town, except the 
ruins of a church steeple, and a disor- 
dered group of old tombstones. On one of 
these, shaded by the boughs of a tree, whose 
trunk has embraced and grown over the edge 
of the stone, and seated on the head-stone of 
another grave, I now address you, 
11* 



126 THE BRITISH SPY. 

What a moment for a lugubrious medita- 
tion among the tombs ! but fear not ; I have 
neither the temper nor the genius of a Her- 
vey: and, as much as I revere his pious me- 
mory, I cannot envy him the possession of 
such a genius and such a temper. For my 
own part, I would not have suffered the 
mournful pleasure of writing his book, and 
doctor Young's Night Thoughts, for all the 
just fame which they have both gained by 
those celebrated productions. Much rather 
would I have danced, and sung, and played 
the fiddle with Yorick, through the whimsical 
pages of Tristram Shandy : that book which 
every body justly censures and admires alter- 
nately ; and which will continue to be read, 
abused and devoured, with ever fresh delight, 
as l6ng as the world shall relish a joyous 
laugh, or a tear of the most delicious feel- 
ing. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 127 

By the by, here on one side is an inscrip- 
tion on a gravestone, which would constitute 
no bad theme for an occasional meditation 
from Yorick himself. The stone, it seems, 
covers the grave of a man who was born 
in the neighbourhood of London; and his 
epitaph concludes the short and rudely exe- 
cuted account of his birth and death, by de- 
claring him to have been " a great sinner, 
" in hopes of a joyful resurrection;" as if he 
had sinned, with no other intention, than to 
give himself a fair title to these exulting 
hopes. But awkwardly and ludicrously as 
the sentiment is expressed, it is in its meaning 
most just and beautiful; as it acknowledges 
the boundless mercy of Heaven, and glances 
at that divinely consoling proclamation, 
" come unto me, all ye, who are weary and 
" heavy-laden, and I will give you rest." 

The ruin of the steeple is about thirty feet 
high, and mantled, to its very summit, with 



128 THE BRITISH SPY. 

ivy. It is difficult to look at this venerable 
object, surrounded as it is with these awful 
proofs of the mortality of man, without ex- 
claiming in the pathetick solemnity of our 

Shakspeare, 

" The cloudcapt towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
" The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
" Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve ; 
'* And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
*' Leave not a wreck bedind." 

Whence, my dear S , arises the 

irrepressible reverence and tender affection 
with which I look at this broken steeple ? Is 
it, that my soul, by a secret, subtile process, 
invests the mouldering ruin with her own 
powers ; imagines it a fellow being ; a ve- 
nerable old man, a Nestor, or an Ossian, who 
has witnessed and survived the ravages of 
successive generations,the companions of his 
youth, and of his maturity, and now mourns 
his own solitary and desolate condition, and 
hails their spirits in every passing cloud ? 



THE BRITISH SPY, 129 

Whatever may be the cause, as I look at it, 
I feel my soul drawn forward, as by the 
cords of gentlest sympathy, and mvoluntari- 
ly open my lips to offer consolation to the 
drooping pile. 

Where my S , is the busy, bust- 
ling crowd which landed here two hundred 
years ago? Where is Smith, that pink of 
gallantry, that flower of chivalry? I fancy 
that I can see their first, slow and cautious ap- 
proach to the shore; their keen and vigilant 
eyes piercing the forest in every direction, 
to detect the lurking Indian, with his toma- 
hawk, bow and arrow. Good Heavens ! 
what an enterprise ! how full of the most 
fearful perils ! and yet how intirely profitless 
to the daring men who personally undertook 
and achieved it ! Through what a series of 
the most spirit-chilling hardships, had they to 
toil ! How often did they cast their eyes to 
England in vain ! and with what delusive 



130 THE BRITISH SPY. 

hopes, day after day, did the little, famished 
crew strain their sia^ht to catch the white sail 
of comfort and relief! But day after day, 
the Sim set, and darkness covered the earth; 
but no sail of comfort or relief came. How 
often in the pangs of huns^er, sickness, soli- 
tude and disconsolation, did they think of 
London ; her shops, her markets groaning 
under the weight of plenty; her streets 
swarming with gilded coaches, bustling 
hacks, with crowds of lords, dukes and com- 
mons, with healthy, busy contented faces of 
every description; and among them none 
more healthy or more contented, than 
those of their ungrateful and improvident di- 
rectors ! But now — where are they, all ? the lit- 
tle, famished colony which landed here, and 
the many-coloured crowd of London, — where 

are they, my dear S ? Gone, where 

there is no distinction ; consigned to the com- 
mon earth. Another generation succeeded 



THE BRITISH SPY. 131 

them: which, just as busy and as busthng as 
that which fell before it, has sunk down into the 
same nothing;ness. Another, and yet another 
Dillow has rolled on, each emulating its pre- 
decessor in height ; towering, for its moment, 
and curling its foaming honours to the clouds ; 
then roaring, breaking, and perishing on the 
same shore. 

Is it not strange, that, familiarly and uni- 
versally as these things are known, yet each 
generation is as eager in the pursuit of its 
earthly objects, projects its plans on a scale 
as extensive, and labours in their execution 
with a spirit as ardent and unrel axing, as 
if this life and this world were to last for- 
ever ? It is indeed, a most benevolent in- 
terposition of Providence, that these palpa- 
ble and just views of the vanity of hu- 
man life are not permitted intirely to crush 
the spirits, and unnerve the arm of industry. 
But at the same time, methinks, it would 



132 THE BRITISH SPY. 

be wise in man to permit them to have, at 
least, so much weight with him, as to pre- 
vent his total absorption by the things of 
this earth, and to point some of his thoughts 
and his exertions, to a system of being, 
far more permanent, exalted and happy. 
Think not this reflection too solemn. It is 
irresistibly inspired by the objects around 
me ; and, as rarely as it occurs, (much too 
rarely) it is most certainly and solemnly 

true, my S 

It is curious to reflect, what a nation, 
in the course of two hundred years, has 
sprung up and flourished from the feeble, 
sickly germ which was planted here! Lit- 
tle did our short sighted court suspect the 
conflict which she was preparing for her- 
self; the convulsive throe by which her in- 
fant colony would in a few years burst 
from her, and start into a political impor- 
tance that would astonish the earth. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 133 

But Virginia, my dear S ...... ., as ra- 
pidly as her population and her wealth must 
continue to advance, wants one most im- 
portant source of solid grandeur; and that 
too, the animating soul of a republick. I 
mean, publick spirit; that sacred amor pa- 
(rice which filled Greece and Rome with 
patriots, heroes and scholars. 

There seems to me to be but one ob- 
ject throughout the state ; to gronv rich : a 
passion which is visible, not only in the 
walks of private life, but which has crept 
into and poisoned every publick body in 
the state. Indeed, from the very genius of 
the government, by which all the publick 
characters are, at short periodical elections, 
evolved from the body of the people, it can- 
not but happen, that the councils of the 
state must take the impulse of the private 
propensities of the country. Hence, Virginia 

exhibits no great publick improvements ; 
12 



134 THE BRITISH SPY. 

hence, in spite of her wealth, every part of 
the country manifests her sufferings, either 
from the penury of her guardians, or their 
want of that attention, and noble pride 
wherewith it is their duty to consult her 
appearance. Her roads and highways are 
frequently impassable, sometimes frightful; 
the very few piiblick works which have 
been set on fo.ot, instead of being carried 
on with spirit, are permitted to languish 
and pine, and creep feebly along, in such 
a manner, that the first part of an edifice 
grows gray with age, and almost tumbles 
in ruins, before the last part is lifted from 
the dust; highest officers are sustained 
with so avaricious, so niggardly a hand, 
that if t!>ey are not driven to subsist on 
roots, and drink ditch-water, with old Fa- 
bricius, it is not for the want of republican 
economy in the projectors of the salaries ; 
and, above all, the general culture of the 



THE BRITISH SPY. 135 

human mind, that best cure for the aristo- 
cratick distmctions which they profess to 
hate, that best basis of the social and poHiical 
equahty, which they profess to love: this cul- 
ture, instead of becoming a national care, is in- 
trusted merely to such individuals, as haz- 
ard, indigence, misfortunes or crimes, have 
forced from their native Europe to seek an 
asylum and bread in the wilds of America. 

They have only one publick seminary of 
learning : a college in Williamsburg, about 
seven miles from this place ; which was erect- 
ed in the reign of our William and Mary ; 
derives its principal support from their muni- 
ficence ; and therefore very properly bears 
their names. This college, in the fastidious 
folly and affectation of republicanism, or 
what is worse, in the niggardly spirit of 
parsimony which they dignify with the name 
of economy, these democrats have endowed 
with a few despicable fragments of surveyor's 



136 THE BRITISH SPY. 

fees, &c. thus converting their national acade- 
my into a mere lazaretto^ and feedini^ its 
polite scientifick and highly respectable pro- 
fessors, like a band of beggars, on the scraps 
and crumbs that fall from the financial ta- 
ble. And; then, instead of aiding and ener- 
gizing the police of the college, by a few ci- 
vil regulations, they permit their youth to 
run riot, in all the wildness of dissipation ; 
while the venerable professors are forced to 
look on, in the deep mortification of con- 
scious impotence, and see their care and 
zeal requited, by the ruin of their pupils an d 
the destruction of their seminary. 

These are points, which, at present, I can 
barely touch; when I have an easier seat and 
writing desk, than a grave and a tombstone, 
it will give me pleasure to dilate on them; 
for, it will afford an opportunity of exult- 
ing in the superiority of our own energetick 



THE BRITISH SPY. \o7 

monarchy, over this republican body without 
a soul.* 

For the present, my dear S , I 

bid you adieu. 

• British Insolence ! Yet it cannot be denied, however 
painful the admission, that there is some foundation 
for his censures. 

12* 



LETTER VII. 

Richmond^ October 10. 

I HAVE been, my dear S , on an ex- 
cursion through the counties which lie along 
the eastern side of the Blue Ridge. A gene-^ 
ral description of that country and its inhabi- 
tants may form the subject of a future letter. 
For the present, I must entertain you with an 
account of a most singular and interesting ad- 
venture, which I met with, in the course of 
the tour. 

It was one Sunday, as I travelled through 
the county of Orange, that my eye was 
caught by a cluster of horses tied near a ru- 
inous, old, wooden house, in the forest, not far 
from the road side. Having frequently seen 
such objects before, in travelling through 
these states, I had no difficulty in understand- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 139 

ing that this was a place of religious wor- 
ship. 

Devotion alone should have stopped me, 
to join in the duties of the congregation; but 
I must confess, that curiosity, to hear the 
preacher of such a wilderness, was not the 
least of my motives. On entering, I was 
struck with his preternatural appearance. He 
was a tall and very spare old man; his head, 
which was covered with a white linen cap, 
his shrivelled hands, and his voice, were all 
shaking under the influence of a palsy; and 
a few moments ascertained to me that he was 
perfectly blind. 

The first emotions which touched my 
breast, were those of mingled pity and venera- 
tion. But ah ! sacred God ! how soon were all 
my feelings changed ! The lips of Plato were 
never more worthy of a prognostick swarm 
of bees, than were the lips of this holy man I 
It was a day of the administration of the sa- 



140 THE BRITISH SPY. 

crament; and his subject, of course, was the 
passion of our Saviour. I had heard the 
subject handled a thousand times: I had 
thought it exhausted long ago. Little did I 
suppose, that in the wild woods of America, 
I was to meet with a man whose eloquence 
would give to this topick a new and more 
sublime pathos, than I had ever before wit- 
nessed. 

As he descended from the pulpit, to dis- 
tribute the mystick symbols, there was a pe- 
culiar, a more than human solemnity in his 
air and manner, which made my blood run 
cold, and my whole frame shiver. 

He then drew a picture of the sufferings of 
our Saviour; his trial before Pilate; his as- 
cent up Calvary ; his crucifixion ; and his 
death. I knew the whole history ; but ne- 
Tcr, until then, hud I heard the circumstan- 
ces so selected, so arranged, so coloured! 
It was all new : and I seemed to have heard 



THE BRITISH SPY. 141 

it for the first time in my life. His enuncia- 
tion was so deliberate, that his voice trembled 
on every syllable ; and every heart in the as- 
sembly trembled in unison. His peculiar phra- 
ses had that force o^ descriptioB, that the ori- 
ginal scene appeared to be> at that moment, 
acting before our eyes. We saw the very fa- 
ces of the Jews: the staring, frightful dstor- 
tions of malice and rage. We saw the buf- 
fet : my soul kindled with a flame of indigna- 
tion ; and my hands were involuntarily and 
convulsively clinched. 

But when he came to touch on the patience, 
the forgiving meekness of our Saviour; 
when he drew, to the life, his blessed eyes 
streaming in tears to heaven ; his voice 
breathing to God, a soft and gentle prayer 
of pardon on his enemies, "Father forgive 
" them, for they know not what they do"— 
the voice of the preacher, which had all along 
faltered, grew fainter and fainter, until his 



142 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Utterance being intirely obstructed by the 
force of his feelings, he raised his hand- 
kerchief to his eyes, and burst into a loud 
and irrepressible flood of grief. The effect 
is inconceivable. The whole house resounded 
with the mingled groans, and sobs, and shrieks 
of the congregation. 

It was some time before the tumult had 
subsided, so far as to permit him to proceed. 
Indeed, judging by the usual, but fallacious 
standard of my own weakness, I began to 
be very uneasy for the situation of the preach- 
er. For I could not conceive, how he would 
be able to let his audience down from the 
height to which he had wound them, without 
impairing the solemnity and dignity of his 
subject, or perhaps shocking them by the 
abruptness of the fall. But— no: the de- 
scent was as beautiful and sublime, as the ele- 
vation had been rapid and enihusiastick. 



THE BRITISH SPY. • 143 

The first sentence, with which he broke 
the awful silence, was a quotation from 
Rousseau : " Socrates died like a philoso- 
"pher, but Jesus Christ, like a God!'* 

I despair of giving you any idea of the ef- 
fect produced by this short sentence, unless 
you could perfectly conceive the whole man- 
ner of the man, as well as the peculiar crisis 
in the discourse. Never before, did I com- 
pletely understand what Demosthenes meant 
by laying such stress on delivery. You are 
to bring before you the venerable figure of the 
preacher; his blindness, constantly recalling to 
your recollection old Homer, Ossian and Mil- 
ton, and associatmg with his performance, the 
melancholy grandeur of their geniuses; you 
are to imaerine that you hear his slow, solemn, 
well-accented enunciation, and his voice of 
aflecting, trembling melody; you are tore- 
member the pitch of passion and enthusiasm 
to which the congregation were raised; and 



144 ' THE BRITISH SPY. 

then, the few minutes of portentous, death- 
like silence which reigned throughout the 
house : the preacher removing his white 
handkerchief from his aged face, even (yet wet 
from the recent torrent of his tears) and slow- 
ly stretching forth the palsied hand which 
holds it, begins the sentence : " Socra- 
<< tes died like a philosopher'* — then pau- 
sing, raising his other hand, pressing them 
both clasped together, with warmth and en- 
ergy to his breast, lifting his " sightless balls" 
to heaven, and pouring his whole soul into his 
tremulous voice—" but Jesus Christ — like a 
" God I" If he had been indeed and in truth 
an angel of light, the effect could scarcely 
have been more divine. 

Whatever 1 hud been able to conceive of 
the sublimity of Massillon, or the force of 
Bourdaloue, had fallen far short of the pow- 
er which I felt from the delivery of this sim- 
ple sentence. The blood, which just before 



THE BRITISH SPY. 145 

had rushed in a hurricane upon my brain, 
and, in the violence and agony of my feelings, 
had held my whole system in suspense, now 
ran back into my heart, with a sensation which 
I cannot describe : a kind of shuddering de- 
licious horrour ! The paroxysm of blended 
pity and indignation, to which I had been 
transported, subsided into the deepest self- 
abasement, humility and adoration. I had 
just been lacerated and dissolved by sympa- 
thy, for our Saviour as a fellow creature ; but 
now, with fear and trembling, I adored him 
as — " a God ! " 

If this description give you the impression, 
that this incomparable minister had any thing 
of shallow, theatrical trick in his maimer, it 
does him great injustice. I have never seen, 
in any other orator, such an union of simpli- 
city and majesty. He has not a gesture, an 
attitude, or an accent, to which he does not 

. seem forced, by the sentiment which he is ex- 
13 



146 THE BIIITISH SPY. 

pressing. His mind is too serious, too earnest, 
too solicitous, and, at the same time, too 
dignified, to stoop to artifice. Although as 
far removed from ostentation as a man can be, 
yet it is clear from the train, the style and 
substance of his thoughts, that he is, not only 
a very polite scholar, but a man of extensive 
and profound erudition, I was forcibly struck 
with a short, yet beautiful character which he 
drew- of our learned and amiable country- 
man, sir Robert Boyle : he spoke of him, as 
if " his noble mind had, even before death, 
'* divested herself of all influence from his 
" frail tabernacle of flesh ;" and called him, 
is his peculiarly emphatick and impressive 
manner, " a pure intelligence : the link be- 
" tween men and angels. " 

This man has been before my imagination 
almost ever since. A thousand times, as I 
rode along, I dropped the reins of my bri- 
dle, stretched forth my hand, and tried t© 



TpE BRITISH spy; 147 

imitate his quotation from Rousseau ; a thou- 
sand times I abandoned the attempt m des- 
pair, and felt persuaded thjit his peculiar 
manner and power arose from an energy of 
soul, which nature could give, but which no 
human being could justly copy. In short, he 
seems to be altogether a being of a former age, 
or of a totally different nature from the rest of 
men. As I recall, at this moment, several of 
his awf'illy striking attitudes, the chilling tide, 
with which my blood begins to pour along my 
arteries, reminds me of the emotions produ- 
ced by the first sight of Gray's introductory 
picture of his bard, 

*' On a rock, whose haughty hrow, 

*' Frowns o'er old Conway's foaming floods 
"Robed ih the sable garb of wo,^ 

** With haggard eyes the poet stood j 
** ( Loose his beard and hoary hair 

«< Streamed, like a meteor, to the troubled air :) 
** And wMth a poet's hand and prophet's fire, 

** Struck the deep sorrows of his lyre." 



148 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Guess my surprise, when, on my arri- 
val at Richmond, and mentioning the name 
of this man, I fgund not oae person who had 
ever before heard of James Waddell ! Is it 
not strange, that such a genius as this, so 
accomplished a scholar, so divine an orator, 
should be permitted to languish and die in ob- 
scurity, within eighty miles of the metro- 
polis of Virginia? To me it is a conclusive 
argument, either that the Virginians have no 
taste for the highest strains of the most sub- 
lime oratory, or that they are destitute of a 
much more important quality, the love of gen- 
uine and exalted religion. 

Indeed, it is too clear, my friend, that this 
soil abounds more in weeds of foreign birth, 
than in good and salubrious fruits. Among 
others, the noxious weed of infidel* ty has 
struck a deep, a fatal root, and spread its pes- 
tilential branches far around. I fear that 
our eccentrick and fanciful countryman. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 149 

Godwin, has contributed not a little to water 
and cherish this pernicious exotick. There is 
a novelty, a splendour, a boldness in his 
scheme of morals, peculiarly fitted to capti- 
vate a youthful and an ardent mind. A young 
man feels his delicacy flattered, in the idea 
of being emancipated from the old, obsolete 
and vulgar motives of moral conduct; and 
acting correctly from motives quite new, 
refined and sublimated in the crucible of 
pure, abstracted reason. Unfortunately, how- 
ever in this attempt to change the motives 
of his conduct, he loses the old ones, while 
the new, either from being too ethereal and 
sublime, or from some other want of con- 
geniality, refuse to mix and lay hold of the 
gross materials of his nature. Thus he be- 
comes emancipated indeed; discharged not 
only from ancient and vulgar shackles ; but 
also, from the modern, finespun, tinselled 

restraints of his divine Godwin. Having im- 
13» 



15# THE BRITISH SPt. 

bibed the hi8:h spirit of literary adventure, he 
disdains the limits of the moral world ; and ad- 
vancing boldly to the throne of God he 
questions him on his dispensations, tnd 
demands the reasons of his laws. But the 
counsels of heaven are above the ken,no^ con- 
trary to the voice of human reason ; and 
the unfortunate youth, unable to reach and 
measure thrm, recoils from the attempt, 
with melancholy ras-hness, into infidelity and 
deism. Godwin's glittering theories are on 
his lips. Utopia or Mezorania boast not 
of a purer moralist, in ivords, than the 
young Godwinian; but the unbridled licen- 
tiousness of hk conduct makes it manifest, 
that if Godwin's principles be true in the 
abstract, they are not fit for this system of 
things ; whatever they might be in the re- 
publick of Plato. 

From a life of inglorious indolence, by far 



THE BRITISH SPY. 151 

too prevalent among the young men of 
this country, the transition is easy and na- 
tural to immorality and dissipation. It is 
at this giddy period of life, when a series 
of dissolute courses have debauched the puri- 
ty and innocence of the heart, shaken the pil- 
lars of the understanding, and converted her 
sound and wholesome operations into little 
more than a set of feverish starts and inco- 
herent and delirious dreams; it is in such a 
situation that a newfangled theory is welcomed 
as an amusing guest, and deism is embraced 
as a balmy comforter against the pangs of 
an offended conscience. This coalition, once 
formed and habitually consolidated, *' fare- 
well, a long farewell" to honour, genius 
and glory! From such a gulph of compli- 
cated ruin, few have the energy even to 
attempt an escape. The moment of cool 
reflection, which should save them, is too 
big with horrour to be endured. Every 



152 THE BRITISH SPY. 

plunge is deeper, until the tragedy is final- 
ly wound up by a pistol or a halter. Do 
not believe that I am drawing from fan- 
cy : the picture is unfortunately true. Few 
dramas, indeed, have yet reached their ca- 
tastrophe ; but, too many are in a rapid pro- 
gress, towards it. 

These thoughts are affecting and oppressive. 
I am glad to retreat from them, by bid- 
ding you adieu; and offering my prayers 
to heaven, that you may never lose the 
pure, the genial consolations of unshaken 
faith, and an approving conscience. Once 
more, my dear S ,, adieu. 



LETTER VIII. 

Richmond^ October 15. 

Men of talents in this country, my dear 

S ., have been generally bred to the 

profession of the law : and indeed, throughout 
the United States, I have met with few 
persons of exalted intellect, whose powers 
have been directed to any other pursuit. The 
bar, in America is the road to honour; and 
hence, although the profession is graced by 
the most shining geniuses on the continent, it 
is incumbered also by a melancholy group of 
young men, who hang on the. rear of the bar, 
like Goethe's sable clouds in the western hori- 
zon. I have been told that the bar of Virgi- 
nia was, a few years ago, pronounced by the 
supreme court of the United States, to be the 
most enlightened and able on the continent. 



154 THE BRITISH SPY- 

I am very incompetent to decide on the me- 
rit of their legal acquirements ; but, putting 
aside the partiality of a Briton, I do not think 
either of the gentlemen by any means so elo- 
quent or so erudite as our countryman £rs- 
kine. With your permission, however, I 
will make you better acquainted with the few 
characters who lead the van of the profes- 
sion. 

Mr has great personal advanta- 
ges. A figure large and portly ; his features 
uncommonly fine; his dark eyes and his 
whole countenance lighted up with an expres- 
sion of the Hiost conciliating sensibility ; his 
attitudes dignified and commanding ; his ges- 
ture easy and graceful; his voice perfect har- 
mony ; and his whole manner that of an ac- 
complished and engaging gentleman. I have 
reason to believe that the expression of his 
countenance does no more than justice to his 
heart. If 1 be correctly informed, his feelings 



THE BRITISH SPY. 155 

are exquisite ; and the proofs of his benevo^ 
lence are various and clear beyond the possi- 
bility of doubt. He has filled the highest offi- 
ces in this commonwealth, and has very long 
maintained a most respectable rank in his 
profession. His character, with the people, 
is that of a great lawyer and an eloquent speak- 
er; and, indeed, so many men of discern- 
ment and taste entertain this opinion, and my 
prepossessions in his favour are so strong, on 
account of the amiable qualities of his charac- 
ter, that I am very well disposed to doubt the 
accuracy of my own judgment as it relates to 
him. 

To me, however, it seems, that his mind, 
as is often but not invariably the case, cor- 
responds with his personal appearance : that 
is, that it is turned rather for ornament than 
for severe use: p.omp.a^ quam p.ugn(e afitior, 
as Tully expresses it His speeches, I think, 
deserve the censure which lord Verulam 



156 THE BRITISH SPY. 

pronounces on the writers posterior to the re« 
formation of the church. *' Luther, '* says he, 
"standing alone, against the church of Rome, 
" found it necessary to awaken all antiquity in 
"his behalf: this introduced the study of the 
" dead languages, a taste for the fulness of 
" the Ciceronean manner; and hence the still 
'* prevalent errour of hunting more after 
"words than matter; and more after the 
" choiceness of the phrase and tlie round and 
<• clean composition of the sentence, and the 
" sweet fallings of the clauses, and the vary- 
"ing and illustration of their works with 
" tropes and figures, than after the weight of 
" matter, worth of subject, soundness of argu- 
"ment, life of invention, or depth of judg- 
" ment. " 

Mr 's temper and habits lead 

him to the swelling, stately manner of Boling- 
broke ; but either from the want of prompti- 
tude and richness of conception, or his too 



THE BRITISH SPY. 157 

sedulous concern and " hunting after words," 
he does not maintain that manner, smoothly 
and happily. On the contrary, the spirits of 
his hearers, after having been awakened and 
put into sweet and pleasant motion, have their 
tide, not unfrequently checked, ruffled and 
painfully obstructed by the hesitation and 
perplexity of the speaker. It certainly must 
demand, my dear S , a mind of ve- 
ry high powers to support the swell of Bol- 
ingbroke, with felicity. The tones of voice, 
which naturally belong to it, keep the expec- 
tation continually " on tiptoe,** and this must 
be gratified not only by the most oily fluency, 
but by a course of argument clear as light, 
and an alternate play of imagination as grand 
iand magnificent as Herschell's dance of the 
sidereal system. The work requires to be 
perpetually urged forward. One interruption 
in the current of the language, one poor 

thought or abortion of fancy, one vacant aver- 
!4 



158 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sion of the eye or relaxation in the expression: 
of the face, intirely breaks and dissolves the 
whole charm. The speaker, indeed, may 
go on and evolve, here and there, a pretty 
thought; but the wondrous magick of the 
whole is gone for ever. 

Whether it be from any defect in the or- 
ganization of Mr 's mind, or that 

his passion for the fine dress of his thoughts 
is the master passion, which, "like Aaron's 
" serpent swallows up the rest," I will not 
undertake to decide ; but perhaps it results 
from one of those tv/o causes, that all the ar- 
guments, which I have ever heard from him, 
are defective in that important and most ma- 
terial character, the lucidus ordo. 

I have been sometimes inclined to believe, 
that a man's division of his argument would 
be generally found to contain a secret history 
of the difficulties which he himself has en- 
countered in the investigation of his subject. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 159 

I am finnly persuaded thai the extreme pro- 
lixity of many discourses, to which we are 
doomed to listen, is chargeable, not to the 
fertility, but to the darkness and impotence 
of the brain which produces them. A man, 
who sees his object m a strong light, march- 
es directly up to it, in a right line, with the 
firm step of a soldier ; while another, residing 
in a less illumined zone, wanders and reels 
in the twilight of the brain, and ere he at- 
tain his object, treads a maze as intricate and 
perplexing as that of the celebrated labyrinth 
of Crete. 

It was remarkable of the of 

the United States, whom I mentioned to you 
in a former letter as looking through a sub- 
ject at a single glance, that he almost invaria- 
bly seized one strong point only, the pivot 
of the controversy : this point he would in- 
force with all his powers, never permitting 
his own mind to waver, nor obscuring those 



160 THE BRtTISH SPY. 

of his hearers, by a cloud of inferior, unim- 
portant considerations. But this is not the 

manner of Mr I suspect, that 

in the preparatory investigation of a subject, 
he gains his ground by slow and laborious 
gradations ; and that his difficulties are nu- 
merous and embarrassing. Hence it is per- 
haps, that his points are generally too mul- 
tifarious; and although, among the rest, he 
exhibits the strong point, its appearance is 
too often like that of Issachar, *' dowM down 
** between two burthens." I take this to be 
a \t ry ill-judgec*' method. It may serve in- 
deed, to make the multitude stare ; but it 
frustrates the great purpose of the speaker. 
Instead of giving a simple, lucid and anima- 
ted view of a subject, it overloads, confounds 
and fatigues the listener. Instead of leaving 
him under the vivacity of clear and fu)l con- 
viction, it leaves him bewildered, darkling, 
asleep; and when he awakes, he 



THE BRITISH SPY. 161 

******* *' wakes, emerging from a sea of dream 
*' Tumultuous; where his wreck 'd desponding thought, 
**From wave to wave of wild uncertainty 
" At random drove, her hel m of reason lost.'* 

I incline to believe that if there be a blem- 
ish in the mind of this amiable gentleman, 
it is the want of a strong and masculine 
judgment. If such an* agent had wield- 
ed the sceptre of his understanding, it is pre- 
sumable, that ere this, it would have chas- 
tised his exuberant fondness for literary finery, 
and the too ostentatious and unfortunate pa- 
rade of points in his argument, on which I 
have just commented. If I may confide in 
the replies which I have heard given to him 
at the bar, this want of judgment is some- 
times manifested in his selection and applica- 
tion of law cases. But of this I can judge 
only from the triumphant air with which his 
14* 



162 . THE BRITISH SPY. 

adversaries seize his cases and appear to turn 
them at^ainst him. 

He is certainly a man of close and elabo- 
rate research. It would seem to me, howe- 
ver, my dear S , that in order to 

constitute a scientifick lawyer, something 
more is necessary than the patient and perse- 
vering revolution of the leaves of an author. 
Does it not require a discernment sufficiently 
clear and strong to eviscerate the principles of 
each case; a judgment potent enough to di- 
gest, connect and systematize them, and to 
distinguish, at once, in any future combination 
of circumstances, the very feature which 
gives or refuses to a principle, a just applica- 
tion? Without such intellectual properties, 
I should conjecture (for on this subject, I 
can only conjecture) that a man could not 
have the fair advantage and perfect command 
of his reading. For, in the first place, I 
should apprehend, that he would never dis- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 163 

cover the application of a case, without the 
recurrence of all the same circumstances; 
in the next place, that his cases would form 
a perfect chaos, a rudis indigestaque molesy 
in his brain; and lastly, that he would often 
and sometimes perhaps fatally mistake the 
identifying feature, and furnish his antagonist 
with a formidable weapon against himself. 

But let me fly from this intangled wilder- 
ness, of which I have so little knowledge, and 

return to Mr Although when 

brought to the standard of perfect oratory, he 
may be subject to the censures which I have 
passed on him ; yet it is to be acknowledged, 
and I make the acknowledgment with plea- 
sure, that he is a man of extensive reading, a 
well informed lawyer, a fine del/es lettres 
scholar, and sometimes a beautiful speaker. 

The gentleman who has been pointed out 
to me as holding the next if not an equal 
grade in the profession is Mr. ....... . 



164 THE BRITISH SPY. 

He is, I am told, upwards of forty years of 
age; but his look, I think, is more juve- 
nile. As to stature, he is about the ordinary 
height of men ; his form genteel, his person 
agile. He is distinguished by a quickness of 
look, a sprightly step, and that peculiarly 
jaunty air, which I have heretofore mentioned, 
as characterizing the people of New York. 
It is an air, however, which, (perhaps, because 
I am a plain son of John Bull) is not entire- 
ly to my taste. Striking, indeed, it is ; highly 
genteel, and calculated for eclat ; but then, I 
fear, that it may be censured as being too ar- 
tificial : as having, therefore, too little ap- 
pearance of connexion with the heart ; too lit- 
tle of that amiable simplicity, that winning 
softness, that vital warmth, which I have felt 
in the manner of a certain friend of mine. 
This objection, however, is not meant to touch 
his heart. I do not mean to censure his sen« 
sibility or his virtues. The remark appplies 



THE BRITISH SPY. 165 

only to the mere exterioar of his manners \ 
and even the censure, which I have pronoun- 
ced on thaty is purely the result of a different 
taste, which is, at least, as probably wron g as 

that of Mr 

Indeed, my dear S , I have seen 

few eminent men in this or any other coun- 
try, who have been able so far to repress 
the exulting pride of conscious talents, as 
to put on the behaviour which is calcula- 
ted to win the hearts of the people. I mean 
that behaviour, v/hich steers between a low- 
spirited, cringing sycophancy and ostenta- 
tious condescension on the one hand, and a 
haughty self importance and supercilious 
contempt of one's fellow creatures on the 
other; that behaviour, in which, while a 
man displays a just respect for his own 
feelings and character, he seems neverthe- 
less, to concentre himself with the dis- 
position and inclination of the person to 



166 THE BRITISH SPY. 

whom he speaks : in a word, that happy 
behaviour, in which versatility and candour, 
modesty and dignity, are sweetly and har- . 
moniously tempered and blended. Any 

Englishman, but yourself, rr.y S , 

would easily recognize the original from 
which this latter picture is drawn. 

This leads me off from the character 

of Mr , to remark a moral defect, 

which I have several times observed in 
this country. Many well meaning men, hav- 
ing heard much of the hollow, ceremonious 
professions and hypocritical grimace of 
com'ts; disgusted with every thing which 
savours of aristocratick or monarchick pa- 
rade ; and smitten with the love of repub- 
lican simplicity and honesty; have fallen into a 
ruggedness of deportment, a thousand times 
more proud, more intolerable and disgusting, 
than Shakspeare's foppish lord, with his chin 
new reapt and pouncet box. They scorn to 
conceal their thoughts; and in the expression 



THE BRITISH SPY. 167 

of them confound bluntness with honesty. 
Their opinions are all dogmas. It is perfectly 
immaterial to them what any one else may 
think. Nay, many of them seem to have 
forgotten, that others can think, or feel at 
all. In pursuit of the hag;gard phantom, of 
republicanism,* they dash on, like sir Joseph 
Banks, giving chase to the emperour of Mo- 
rocco, regardless of the sweet and tender 
blossoms of sensibility, which fall and bleed, 
and die behind them. What an errour is 

this, my dear S ! I am frequently 

disposed to ask such men, " think you, that 
the stern and implacable Achilles was an 
honester man than the gentle, humane and 
cosiderate Hector? Was the arrogant and 
imperious Alexander an honester man than 
the meek compassionate and amiable Cy- 
rus ? Was the proud, the rough, the surly 

• This phrase is scai-cely excusable, even in a liritoa 
asd a lorfl. 



168 THE BRITISH SPY. 

Cato, more honest than the soft, polite and 
delicate Scipio Africanus ? In short, are not 
honesty and humanity compatible ? And 
what is the most genuine and captivating 
politeness, but humanity refined I" 

But to return from this digression. The 

qualities, by which Mr strikes 

the multitude, are his ingenuity and his 
wit. But those, who look more closely in- 
to the anatomy of his mind, discover many 
properties of much higher dignity and impor- 
tance. This gentleman, in my opinion, 
unites in himself a greater diversity of ta- 
lents and acquirements, than any other at 
the bar of Virginia. He has the reputa- 
tion, and I doubt not a just one, of possess- 
ing much legal science He has an exqui- 
site and a highly cultivated taste for polite 
literature; a genius quick and fertile; a 
style pure and classick ; a stream of perspi- 
cuous and beautiful elocution; an ingenuity 



THE BRITISH SPY. 169 

"which no difficulties can entangle or em- 
barrass ; and a wit, whose vivid and bril- 
liant coruscation, can gild and decorate the 
darkest subject. He chooses his ground, 
in the first instance with great judgment; 
and when, in the progress of a cause, an un- 
expected evolution of testimony, or inter- 
mediate decisions from the bench, have bea- 
ten that ground from under him, he possesses 
a happy, an astonishing versatility, by which 
he is enabled at once, to take a new posi- 
tion, without appearing to have lost an atom, 
either in the measure or stability of his basis. 
This is a faculty which I have observed be- 
fore in an inferiour degree ; but Mr 

is so adroit, so superiour in the execution of 
it, that in him it appears a new and pecu- 
liar talent; his statements, his narrations, 
his arguments, are all as transparent as 
the light of day. He reasons logically, and 

declaims very handsomely. It is true, he 
15 



170 THE BRITISH SPY. 

never brandishes the Olympick thunder of 
Homer, but then he seldom, if ever, sinks 
beneath the chaste and attractive majesty 
of Virt^il. 

His fault is, that he has not veiled his inge- 
nuity with sufficient address. Hence, I 
am told, that he is considered as a Pro- 
teus ; and the courts are disposed to doubt 
their senses, even vi^hen he appears in his 
proper shape. But in spite of this adverse 

and unpropilious distrust, Mr *s 

popularity is still in its flood ; and he is 
justly considered as an honour and an orna- 
ment to his profession. 

Adieu my friend, for the present. Ere 
long we may take another tour through 
this gallery of portraits, if more interesting 

objects do not call us off. Again my S , 

good night. 



LETTER IX. 

Richmond^ October 30. 

Talents, my dear S , wherever 

they have had a suitable theatre, have never 
failed lo emerge from obscurity and assume 
their proper rank in the estimation of the 
world. The celebrated Camden is said to have 
been the tenant of a garret. Yet from the 
darkness, poverty and Ignominy, of this resi- 
dence, he advanced to distinction and weaUh, 
and graced the first offices and tides of our 
island. It is impossible to turn over the Bri- 
tish biography, without being struck and 
charmed by the multitude of correspondent 
examples: a venerable group of novi homi' 
nes. as the Romans called them : men, who, 
from the lowest depths of obscurity and want, 
and without even the influence of a patron, 



172 THE BRITISH SPY. 

have risen to the first honours of then' coun- 
try, and founded their own families anew. In 
every nation, and in every ag-e, great talents, 
thrown fairly into the point of publick observa- 
tion, will invariably produce the same ultimate 
effect. The jealous pride of power may at- 
tempt to repress and crush them j the base 
and malignant rancour of impotent spleen and 
envy may strive to embarrass and retard their 
flight ; but these efforts, so far from achieving 
their ignoble purpose, so far from producing 
a discernible obliquity in the ascent of genuine 
and vigorous talents, will serve only to increase 
their momentum and mark their transit with 
an additional stream of glory. 

When the great earl of Chatham first 
made his appearance in our house of com- 
mons, and began to astonish and transport 
the British parliament, and the British nation, 
by the boldness, the force and range of his 
thoughts, and the celestial fire and pathos 



THE BRITISH SPY. l7S 

of his eloquence, it is well known, that the 
minister VValpole, and his brother Horace, 
(from motives very easily understood) ex- 
erted all their wit, all their oratory, all their 
acquirements of every description, sustained 
and enforced by the unfeeling " insolence of 
" office," to heave a mountain on his gigantick 
genius, and hide it from the world. Poor 
and powerless attempt ! The tables were 
turned. He rose upon them in the might 
and irresistible energy of his genius; and in 
spite of all their convolutions, frantick ago- 
nies and spasms, he strangled them and 
their whole faction with as much ease as 
Hercules did the serpent ministers of jealou- 
sy, that were sent to assail his infant cradle. 
Who can turn over the debates of the day, 
and read the account of this conflict between 
youthful ardour and hoary headed cunning 
and power, without kindling in the cause of 

the tyro, and shouting at his victory ? That 
15* 



174 THE BRITISH SPY. 

lliey should have attempted to pass off the 
grand, yet solid and judicious operations of 
a mind like his, as beinj^ mere theatrical 
start and emotion ; the giddy, hairbrained 
eccentricities of a romantick hoy ! That they 
should have had the presun)ption to suppose 
themselves capable of chaining down to the 
floor of the parliament, a genius so ethereal, 
towering, and sublime ! Why did they not, 
in the next breath, by way of crowning the 
climax of vanity, bid the magnificent fireball 
to descend from its exalted and appropriate 
region, to perform its splendid tour along 
the surface of the earth I* 

* See a beautiful note in Darwin's Bontanick Garden, in 
whicli the writer suggests the probability of three concen- 
trick strata of our atmosphere, in which, or between them, 
are produced four kinds of meteors ; in the lowest, the 
common lightning ; in the next, shooting stars ; and the 
highest region, wliicli he supposes toconsi tof inflamui:ible 
gas tenfold lighter than the common atmospherick air, he 



THE BRITISH SPY. 175 

When the son of this great man too, our 
present minister, and his compeer and rival, 
our friend, first commenced their political 
career, the publick papers teemed with stric- 
tures on their respective talents : the first 
was censured as being merely a dry and even 
a flimsy reasoner; the last was stigmatized 
as an empty declaimer. But errour and 
misrepresentation soon expire, and are tor- 
gotten; while truth rises upon their ruins, 
and " flourishes in eternal youth." Thus, 
the false, the light, fugacious newspaper cri- 
ticisms, which attempted to dissect and cen- 

makes the theatre of the northern light, and fireball or 
draco volaus. lie recites the history of one of the latter, 
seen in the year 17o8, which was estimated to have been a 
mile and a half in circumference ; to have been one hun- 
dred miles high ; and to have moved towards the north, 
thirty miles in a second. It had a real tail, many miles 
long, which threw oft' sparks in its course ; and the whole 
explotled with a sound like that of distant thunder. JJot. 
Garden, part I, note 1. 



176 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sure the arrangement of those gentlemen's 
talents, have been long since swept away by 
the besom of oblivion. They wanted truth, 
that soul, which alone can secure immorta- 
lity to any literary work. And Mr Pitt and 
Mr. Fox have for many years been recipro- 
cally and alternately recognized, just as their 
subject demands it, either as close and co- 
gent reasoners, or as beautiful and superb 
rhetoricians. 

Talents, therefore, which are before the 
publick, have nothing to dread, either from 
the jealous pride of power, or from the tran- 
sient misrepresentations of party, spleen, or 
envy. In spite of opposition from any cause, 
their buoyant spirit will lift them to their pro- 
per grade: it would be unjust that it should 
lift them higher. 

It is true, there always are, and . always 
will be, in every society, individuals, who 
will fancy themselves examples of genius 



THE BRITISH SPY. 177 

overlooked, underrated, or invidiously op- 
pressed. But the misfortune of such per- 
sons is imputable to their own vanity, 
and not to the publick opinion, which has 
weighed and graduated them. 

We remember many of our schoolmates, 
whose geniuses bloomed and died within the 
walL of Alma Mater ; but whose bodies still 
live, the moving monuments of departed 
splendour, the animated and affecting re- 
membrances of ihe extreme fragility of the 
human intellect. We remember others, who 
have entered on publick life, with the most 
exulting promise ; have flown from the 
earth, like rockets ; and, after a short and 
brilliant flight, have bursted with one or two 
explosions — to blaze no more. Others, by a 
few premature scintillations of thought, have 
led themselves and their partial friends, to 
hope that they were fast advancing to a dawn 
of soft and beauteous light, and a meridian of 



175 THE BRITISH SPY. 

bright and gorgeous efiulgence; but their 
day has never yet broken, and never will it 
break. They are doomed for ever to that 
dim, crepuscular light, wh ch surrounds the 
frozen poles, when the sun has retreateo to 
the opposite circle of the heavens. Theirs 
is the eternal glimmering of the brain; and 
their most luminous displays are the faint 
twinklings of the glow worm. We have 
seen others, who, at their start, gain a casu- 
al projectility, which rises them above their 
proper grade; but by the just operation of 
their specifick ;>ravity, they are made to sub- 
side again, and settle ultimately in the sphere 
to which they properly belong. 

All these characters, and many others who 
have had even slighter bases for their once 
sanguine, but now blasted hopes, form a 
querulous and melancholy band of nioon- 
struck declaimers against the injus;i( e o' the 
world, the agency of envy, the force of des- 



THE BRITISH SPY, 170 

tiny, &c. charging their misfortune on every 
thing but the true cause: their own want 
of intrinsick sterling merit; their want of 
that copious, perennial spring of great 
and useful thought; without which a man 
may hope in vain for growing reputation. 
Nor are they ahvays satisfied with wailing 
their own destiny, pouring out the bitterest 
imprecations of their sc 'is on the cruel stars 
which presided at their birth, and aspersing 
the justice of the publick opinion which has 
scaled them : too often in the contortions and 
pangs of disappointed ambition, they cast 
a scowling eye over the world of man ; start 
back and blanch at the lustre of superiour 
merit ; and exert all the diabolical incanta- 
tions of their black art. to conjure up an im- 
pervious vapour, in order to shroud its glo- 
ries from the world. But it is all in vain. In 
spite of every thing, the publick opinion will 
finally do justice to us all. The man who 
Comes fairly before the world and who pos*> 



180 THE BRITISH SPY. 

sesses the great and vigorous stami7ia which 
entitle iiim to a nich in the temple of glory, 
h s no reason to dread the ultimate result; 
however slow his progress may be, he will 
in the end most indubitably receive that dis- 
tinction. While the rest, *' the swallows of 
science," the butterflies of genius, mav flut- 
ter, for their spring ; but they will soon pass 
away and be remembered no more. No en- 
terprising man, therefore (and least of aii, 
the truly great man' has reason to droop or 
repine at any eflbrts which he may suppose 
to be made with the view to depress him ; 
since he may rely on the universal and un- 
cbaneing truth : that talents* which are be- 
fore the world, will most inevitably find their 
proper level; svnd this is, certainly, all that 
a just man should desire. Let, then, the 
tempest of envy or of malice howl around 
him. His genius will consecrate him; and 
any attempt to extinguish that, will be as 



THE BRITISH SPY. 181 

unavailin?^, as would a human effort *' to 
quench the stars." 

I have been led farther into these reflec- 
tions than I had anticipated. The train was 
started by casting my eyes over V^irginia; 
observing the very few who have advanced 
on the theatre of publick observation, and the 
very many who will remain for ever behind 
the scenes. 

What frequent instances of high, native 
genius have I seen springing in the wilder- 
nesses of this country ; genius, whose blos- 
soms, the light of science has never court- 
ed into expansion ; genius, which is doomed 
to fall and die, far from the notice and the 
haunts of men! How often, as I have held 
my way through the western forests of this 
state, and reflected on the vigorous shoots of 
superiour intellect, which were freezing and 
perishing there for the want of culture ; how 

often have I recalled the moment, when onr 

16 



182 THE BRITISH SPY. 

pathetick Gray, reclining under the moulder^ 
ing elm of his country church yard, while 
the sigh of genial sympathy broke from his 
heart, and the tear of noble pity started in 
bis eye, exclaimed 

« Perhaps in this neglected spot his laid 
**Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire, 

" Hands that the rod of empire might have sway'd, 
**0r wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. 

" But knowledge to their eyes, her ample page, 
*' Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll ; 

'* Chill penury repress'd their noble rage, 
*• And froze the genial current of their soul. 

<* Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 
" The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear 5 

" Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
** And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

"Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast, 
*' The little tyrant of his fields withstood ; 

*' Some mute, inglorious Milton, here may rest ; 
"Seme Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 183 

** Th' applause of list'ning senates to command, 
"The threats of pain and ruin to despise, 

* To scatter plenty o'er a sinifing land, 
** »And read their history in a nation^ s eyeSf 

"Their lot forbade"— 

The heart of a philanthropist, no matter to 
what country or what form of government 
he may belong, immediately inquires, "And 
" is there no mode to prevent this melancho- 
" ly waste of talents ? Is there no mode by 
" which the rays of science might be so dif- 
" fused over the state, as to call forth each 
" latent bud into life and luxuriance ?'* There 
is such a mode : and what renders the legis- 
lature of this state still more inexcusable, 
the plan by which these important purposes 
might be effected, has been drawn out and 
has lain by them for nearly thirty years. The 
declaration of the independence of this com- 
monwealth was made in the month of May? 



184 THE BRITISH SPY. 

1776.* In the fall of that year, a statute, op 
as it is called here, " an act of assembly" 
was iTiade, providing that a committee of five 
persons should be appointed to prepare a code 
of laws, adapted to the change of the state 
government This code was to be submitted 
to the legislature of the country, and to be ra- 
tified or rejected by their suffrage. 

In the ensuing November, by a resolution 
of the same legislature* Thomas Jefi'erson, 
Edmund Pendleton, George Wythe, George 
Mason, and Thomas Ludwell Lee, esquires, 
were appointed a committee to execute the 
work in question. It was prepared by the 
three first named gentlemen; the first of 

* This is a fact which the puhlick journals of the state 
establish beyond controversy ; although tlie legal process 
and other publick acts of Virginia modestly waive ihis pre- 
cedence, and date the foundation of the commonweylth, 
on the 4th of July, 1776, the day on which the (ieclaration 
of the independence of the United States was promuiged. 



THE BaiTISH SPY. 185 

them, now the president of the United States ; 
the second, the president of the supreme 
court of appeals of Virginia, and the third, the 
judge of the high court of chancery, at this 
place. 

I have perused this system of state po- 
lice, with admiration. It is evidently the work 
of minds of most astonishing greatness ; ca- 
pable, at once, of a grand, profound and com- 
prehensive survey of the present and fu- 
ture interest and glory of the whole state ; 
and of pursuing that interest and glory 
through all the remote and minute ramifica- 
tions of the extensive and elaborate detail. 

Among other wise and highly patriotick 
bills which are proposed, there is one, for the 
more general diffusion of knowledge.. After 
a preamble, in which the importance of the 
subject to the republick is most ably and elo- 
quently announced, the bill proposes a simple 

and beautiful scheme, whereby science (like 

16* 



186 THE BRITISH SPY. 

justice under the institutions of our Alfred) 
would have been " carried to every man's 
"door." Genius, instead of having to break 
its way through the thick opposing clouds 
of native obscurity, indigence and ignorance, 
was to be sought for through every family in 
the commonwealth ; the sacred spark, where- 
ver it was detected, was to be tenderly cher- 
ished, fed, and fanned into a flame ; its innate 
properties and tendencies were to be develo- 
ped and examined, and then cautiously and 
judiciously invested with all the auxiliary en- 
ergy and radiance of which its character was 
susceptible. 

What a plan was here to give stability and 
solid glory to the republick ! If you ask me 
why it has never been adopted, I answer, that 
as a foreigner, I can perceive no possible rea- 
son for it, except that the comprehensive 
views and generous patriotism, which produ- 
ced the bill, have not prevailed throughout 



THE BRITISH SPY, 187 

the country, nor presided in the body on 
whose vote the adoption of the bill depended. 
I have new reason to remark it, almost every 
day, that there is throughout Virginia, a most 
deplorable destitution of publick spirit, of the 
noble pride and love of country. Unless the 
body of the people can be awakened from 
this fatal apathy; unless their thoughts and 
their feelings can be urged beyond the narrow 
confines of their own private affairs ; unless 
they can be strongly inspired with the pub- 
lick zeal, the amor fiairiie of the ancient re- 
publicks, the national embellishment, and 
the national grandeur of this opulent state, 
must be reserved for very distant ages. 

Adieu, my S ; perhaps you will 

hear from me again before I leave Richmond. 



FROM THE VIRGINIA GAZETTE. 

AN APOLOGY 

IN RF-PLY TO A HINT. 

The Letters of the British Spy were furnish- 
ed to amuse the citizens of the town and coun- 
try ; and not to give pain to any one human be- 
ing. Accordingly, nothing has been said in 
censure of the integrity, the philanthropy, the 
benevolence, charity, or any other moral or re- 
ligious virtue or grace of any one Virginian, 
who has been introduced into those letters. 
Nothing indeed could be justly said on those 
heads, in censure of either of the gentlemen. 
It is true, that some letters have been publish- 
ed, which have attempted to annalyze the 
minds of three or four well known citizens of 
this state, and in order to designate them 



THE BRITISH SPY, 189 

more particularly, a description of the person 
and manner of each gentleman was given. 
This has been called "throwing stones at 
" other people's glass houses,'* and ihe per- 
son who has communicated those letters 
(gratuitously styled their " author") is polite- 
ly reminded that he himself resides " in a 
" glass house." 

If this be correctly understood, it implies 
a threat of retaliation ; but all that the laws 
oi retaliation could justify, would be to amuse 
the town and country with a description of 
the person^ mayiner and mind of the author 
(as he is called) of the Briiish Spy. He 
fears, however, that it would puzzle the hint- 
er, whatever his genius may be, to render so 
barren a subject interesting and amusing to 
the publick : and he would be much obliged 
to the hinter if he could make it appear that 
he (the furnisher of the letters) deserves to be 
drawn into comparison, either as to person. 



190 THE BRITISH SPY. 

manner, or mind, with any one of the gen- 
tlemen delineated by the British Spy. As to 
his person, indeed, he is less solicitous ; the 
defects of that were imposed on him by na* 
ture ; and there is no principle better establish- 
ed than this general principle of eternal truth 
and justice, that no man ought to be censured 
for contingencies over which he had no con- 
trol. As to his manner, he has as little ob- 
jection to a publick description of that as 
his person. 

To save the trouble of others, however, 
he relinquishes all pretensions either to the 
striking elegance which is calculated to ex- 
cite admiration and respect, or to the concilia- 
ting: grace and vital warmth which are quali- 
fied to gain enthusiastick friends. His man- 
ner is probably such as would be produced, 
nine times out of ten, by the rustick education 
Co which he was exposed. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 191 

As to his mind, it is almost such as nature 
made it. He cannot boast with Gray, that 
" science frowned not on his humble birth." 
But what of this ? A man may very accu- 
rately anatomize the powers of a mind far su- 
periour to his own. It is not improbable 
that Zoilus's criticisms of Homer were just ; 
since every nod of Homer's was a fair sub- 
ject of criticism. Yet who will suppose 
that Zoilus yould have produced such a work 
as the Iliad ? It is impossible to read Den- 
nis's criticisms of Addison's Cato without be- 
ing forcibly struck with their justice, and 
wondering that they have never before occur- 
red to ourselves Yet there is no man, who 
will therefore pronounce the genius of Den- 
nis equal to that of Addison. 'These facts are 
so palpable and so well understood, that the 
person who furnished the letters of the Bri- 
tish Spy (even if he had been their author) 
could scarcely have had the presumption to 



192 THE BRITISH SPY, 

suppose, nor, I trust, the injustice to desirCj 
that the publick would pronounce his mind 
free from the defects, much less indued with 
the energies and beauties of those which he 
criticises. 

But where is the harm which has been 
done? Who are the gentlemen introduced 
into the British Spy? Are they young men 
just emerging into notice, and concerning 
whom the publick have yet to form an opi- 
nion? Far from it. They are gentlemen, 
who have long been, and who still are dis- 
playing themselves in the very centre of the 
circle of general observation. They have 
not hid their light under a bushel. Their 
city is built on a high hill. There is not a 
feature of their'persons, nor a quality of their 
mind or manner, which has not been long 
and well known, and remarked, commented 
on, criticised, repeated and reiterated a thou- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 193 

sand and ten thousand times in every circle 
and every corner of the country 

Was it in the power, then, of any remarks 
in an anonymous and fugitive newspaper 
pubhcation, either to injure or serve gentle- 
men so well and so eminently known ? On 
the contrary, if those remarks were untrue, 
they would be instantaneously and infallibly 
corrected by the publick opinion and know- 
ledge of the subject; if the remarks were 
true, they would add no new fact to the pub- 
lick opinion and the publick knowledge. 
Thinking thus, nothing was more distant, ei- 
ther from the expectation or wish of the per- 
son who has furnished the press with the let- 
ters of the British Spy, than that he was about 
to do an injury to the character, or to inflict 
a wound on the feelings of any citizen of the 
country. Why could he have expected or 
wished any such effect? He could not have 

been actuated by resentment ; for neither of 
17 



194 THE BRITISH SPY. 

those gentlemen have ever done him an inju- 
ry. He could not have been moved by per- 
sonal mterestj since his conscious inferiority, 
as well as the nature of his pursuits, remove 
him far from the possibility of being ever 
brought into collision with either of those gen- 
tlemen. He could not have been impelled by 
diaboUcal envy, or the malicious agony of 
blasted ambition ; since his country has alrea- 
dy distinguished him far, very far, beyond his 
desert. And of the malevolence of heart 
which could intentionally do a wicked, a wan- 
ton and unprovoked injury, he is persuaded 
that either of the gentlemen, if they knew 
him, would mo^t freely and cheerfully ac- 
quit him. 

It he be asked why he published the 
letters describing those characters ? He an- 
swers, 

First, for the same reason that he would, 
if he could, present to the town, a set of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 195 

landscape paintings, representing all the love- 
ly prospects which belong to their beautiful 
city; to furnish them with the amusement and 
pleasure, v/hich arise from surveying an ac- 
curate picture of a well known original ; and 
this implies, that he could not have believed 
himself adding new information, as to the 
originals themselves. 

Secondly, he hoped that the abstracted and 
miscellaneons remarks, which were blended 
with the description of those characters, 
might not be without their use, to the many 
literary young men who are growing up in 
Virginia. 

If the letters of the British Spy have gone 
beyond these purposes; if they have given 
pain to the gentlemen described ; ( for as to 
doing them an injury, it is, certainly, out of 
the question ) there is no man in the com- 
munity disposed to regret it, more sensibly, 



196 THE BRITISH SPY. 

than the man who furnished those letters for 
publicaiion. 

But while honour and justice compel the 
writer of this article to give these explana- 
tions, and make these acknowledgiiients to 
the gentlemen immediately interested, he 
begs he may not be considered as descending 
to the meanness of begging mercy on his 
own "glass house." On the contrary, the 
person, who has published the polite hint 
in question, is welcome to commence his 
assault as soon as he pleases. He can 
scarcely point out one defect in the person, 
manner, or mind of this writer, of which 
he is not already conscious. And if he meant 
by his menace any thing more ; if he meant 
to insinuate a suspicion to the publick, that 
the honesty, integrity, or moral purity, of 
the man who furnished the letters of the 
British Spy for publication, are assailable on 
any ground of truth ; if such was his inten- 
tion, be has intended an injury, at which this 



THE BBITISH SPY. 197 

writer laughs in proud security : an injury, for 
which his own heart, if it be a good one, will 
not forgive him so soon, as will the heart of 
the man whom he has attempted to injure. 
. The v/riter of this article tenders in return 
this hint to the hinter : that before he com- 
mences his hostile operations, he will be 
sure of his man. As to the person who real- 
ly did furnish the British Spy— the finger of 
conjecture has been erroneously pointed at 
several who reside in this state. It would be 
unjust and barbarous to punish the innocent 
for the guilty, if guilt can be justly charged 
on the British Spy. 

17* 



LETTER X. 

Richmond^ December 10. 

In one of my late rides into the surrounding 
country, I stopped at a little inn to refresh 
myself and my horse; and, as the landlord 
was neither a Boniface, nor " mine host of 
the garter," I called for a book, by way of 
killing time, while the preparations for my re- 
past were going forward. He brought me a 
shattered fragment of the second volume of 
the Spectator, which he told me was the only 
book in the house, for '^ he never troubled 
his head about reading ;" and by way of con- 
clusive proof, he further informed me, that 
this fragment, the only book in the house, 
had been sleeping unmolested in the dust of 
his mantlepiece, for ten or fifteen years. I 
could not meet my venerable countrymauj in 



THE BRITISH SPY. 199 

a foreign land, and in this humiliating plight, 
nor hear of the inhuman and gothick con- 
tempt with which he had been treated, with- 
out the liveliest emotion. So I read my host 
a lecture on the subject, to which he appeared 
to pay as little attention, as he had before 
done to the Spectator, and, with the sang 
froid of a Dutchman, answered me in the 
cant of the country, that he " had other fish 
to fry," and left me. 

It had been so long since I had had an op- 
portunity of opening that agreeable collection, 
that the few numbers, which were now be- 
fore me, appeared almost intirely new; 
and I cannot describe to you, the avidity and 
delight, with which I devoured those beautiful 
and interesting speculations. 

Is it not strange, my dear S , that 

such a work should have ever lost an inch of 
ground ? A style so sweet and simple, and 
yet so ornamented ! a temper so benevolent^ 



200 THE BIllTISH SPY. 

SO cheerful, so exhilarating! a body of know- 
ledge, and of original thought, so immense 
and various ! so strikingly just, so universally 
useful ! What person, of any age, sex, tem- 
per, calling, or pursuit, can possibly con- 
verse with the Spectator, without being con- 
scious of immediate improvement? 

To the spleen, he is as perpetual, and ne- 
verfailing an antidote, as he is to igno- 
rance and immorality. No matter for the 
disposition of mind in which you take him 
up; you catch, as you go along, the happy 
tone of spirits which prevails throughout the 
work; you smile at the wit, laugh at the 
drollery, feel your mind enlightened, your 
heart opened, softened and refined ; and when 
you lay him down, you are sure to be in a 
better humour, both with yourself and every 
body else. I have never mentioned the sub- 
ject to a reader of the Spectator, who did 
not admit this to be the invariable process; 



"HHE BRITISH SPY. 201 

and in such a world of misforiunes, of cares 
and sorrows and guilt as this is, what a prize 
would this collection be, if it were rightly es- 
timated ! 

Were I the sovereign of a nation, which 
spoke the English language, and wished my 
subjects cheerful, virtuous and enlightened, I 
would furnish every poor family in my do- 
minions (and see that the rich furnished them- 
selves) with a copy of the Spectator ; and 
ordain that the parents or children should 
read four or five numbers, aloud, every night 
in the year. For one of the peculiar perfec- 
tions of the work is, that while it contains 
such a mass of ancient and modern learn- 
ing, so much of profound wisdom, and of 
beautiful composition, )et there is scarcely a 
number throughout the eight volumes, which 
is not level to the meanest capacity. Another 
perfection is, that the Spectator will never 



202 THE BRITISH SPY. 

become tiresome to any one whose taste 
and whose heart remain uncorrupted. 

I do not mean that this author, should be 
read to the exclusion of others; much less 
that he should stand in the way of the ge- 
nerous pursuit of science, or interrupt the 
discharge of social or private duties. All the 
counsels of the work itself have a directly 
reverse tendency. It furnishes a store of the 
clearest argument and of the most amiable 
and captivating exhortations, ** to raise the ge- 
nius, and to mend the heart " I regret, only, 
that such a book should be thrown by, and 
almost intirely forgotten, while the gilded blas- 
phemies of infidels, and "the noontide tran- 
ces" of pernicious theorists, are hailed with 
rapture, and echoed around the world. For 
such, I should be pleased to see the Specta- 
tor universally substituted : and, throwing out 
of the question its morality, its literary infor- 
mation, its sweetly ^contagious serenity, ancl 



THE BRITISH SPY. 203 

the pure and chaste beauties of its style; 
and considering it merely as a curiosity, as 
concentring the brilliant sports of the finest 
cluster of geniuses, that ever graced the 
earth, it surely deserves perpetual attention, 
respect and consecration. 

There is, me thinks, my S , a 

great fault in the world, as it respects this 
subject: a giddy instability, a light and flutter- 
ing vanity, a prurient longing after no- 
velty, an impatience, a disgust, a fastidious 
contempt of every thing that is old. You will 
not understand me as censuring the progress 
of sound science. I am not so infatuated an 
antiquarian, nor so poor a philanthropist, 
as to seek to retard the expansion of the 
human mind. But I lament the eternal 
oblivion, into which our old authors, those 
giants of literature, are permitted to sink, 
while the world stands open-eyed and open- 
moijthe4 to catch every modern, tinselled 



204 THE BRITISH SPY. 

abortion, as it falls from the press. In 
the polite circles of America, for instance, 
perhaps there is no want of taste and even 
zeal for letters. I have seen several gentle- 
men, who appear to have an accurate, a 
minute acquaintance with the whole range 
of literature, in its present state of improve- 
ment : yet, you will be surprised to hear, that 
I have not met with more than one or two 
persons in this country, who have ever 
read the works of Bacon or of Boyle. They 
delight to saunter in the upper story, sus- 
tained and adorned, as it is, with the deli- 
cate proportions, the foliage and flourishes 
of the Corinthian order; but they disdain 
to make any acquaintance, or hold com- 
munion at all, with the Tuscan and Doric 
plainness and strength, which base and sup- 
port the whole edifice. 

As to lord Verulam, when he is con- 
sidered as the father of experimental phito- 



THE BRITISH SPY. 203 

sophy; as the champion, whose vigour bat- 
tered down the idolised chimeras of Aristotle, 
together with all the appendant and im- 
measurable webs of the brain, woven and 
hung upon them, by the ingenious dreamers 
of the schools ; as the hero who not only 
rescued and redeemed the world from all this 
darkness, jargon, perplexity and errour; but, 
from the stores of his own great mind, 
poured a flood of light upon the earth, 
straighteneri the devious paths of science, 
and planned the whole paradise, which we 
now find so full of fragrance, beauty and 
grandeur; when he is considered, I say, in 
these points of view, 1 am astonished that lit- 
erary gentlemen do not court his acquaintance, 
if not through reverence, at least through cu- 
riosity. The person who does so will find 
every period filled with pure and solid 
golden bullion: that bullion, whicJi several 

much admired posterior writers have merely 

18 



206 THE BRITISH SPY, 

moulded into various forms, or beaten inte 
leaf, and taught to spread its floating splen- 
dours to the sun. 

This insatiate palate for novelty, which I 
have mentioned, has had a very striking effect 
on the style of modern productions. The 
plain language of easy conversation will no 
longer do. The wrter who contends for 
fame, or even for truth, is obliged to con- 
sult the reigning taste of the day Hence too 
often, in opposition to his own judgment, 
he is led to incumber his ideas with a gor- 
geous load of ornaments ; and when he would 
present to the publick a body of pure, sub- 
stantial and useful thought, he finds him- 
self constrained to incrust and bury its uti- 
lity within a dazzling case; to convert a 
feast of reason into a concert of sounds : a 
rich intellectual boon into a mere bouquet 
of variegated pinks and blushing roses. 
In his turn he contributes to establish 



THE BRITISH SPY. 207 

and spread wider the perversion of the 
publick taste ; and thus, en a principle 
resembling that of action and reaction, 
the author and the publick reciprocate the 
injury ; just as, in the licentious reign 
of our Charles the lid, the dramatist and 
his audience were wont to poison each other's 
morals. 

A history of style would indeed be a cu- 
pious and highly interesting one : I mean a 
philosophical, as well as chronological his- 
tory ; one which, besides marking the grada- 
tions, changes and fluctuations exhibited in 
the style of different ages and different coun- 
tries, should open the regular or contingent 
causes of all those gradations, changes and 
fluctuations. I should be particularly pleased 
to see a learned and penetrating mind employ- 
ed on the question. Whether the gradual 
adornment, which we observe in a nation's 
style, result from the progress of science ; or 



203 THE BRITISH SPY. 

whether there be an infancy, a youth, and a 
manhood, in a nation's sensibility, which ri- 
sing in a distant age, like a newborn billow, 
rolls on through succeeding i^c-erations, with 
accumulating height and force, and bears along 
with it the concurrent expression of that sensi- 
bility, until they both swell and tower into the 
sublime— and sometimes break into the bathos. 
The historical facts, as well as the meta- 
physical consideration of the subject, perplex 
these questions extremely ; and, as sir Roger 
De Coverly says, " much may be said on 
both sides'* For the present I shall say 
nothing on either: except that from some of 
Mr. Blair's remarks, it would seem that nei- 
ther of those hypotheses will solve the phe- 
nomenon before us. If I remember his opi- 
nion correctly, the most sublime style is to be 
sought in a state of nature ; when, anteriour 
to the existence of science, the scantiness of a 
language forces a people to notice the points 



THE BRITISH SPY. 20^ 

of resemblance between the great natural 
objects with which they are surrounded . to 
apply to one the terms which belong to ano- 
ther ; and thus, by compulsion, to rise at 
once into simile and metaphor, and launch 
into all the boldness of trope and figure. If 
this be true, it would seem that the progress 
of a civilized nation towards sublimity of 
style is perfectly a retrograde manoeuvre: 
that is, that they will be sublime according 
to the nearness of their approach to the pri- 
meval state of nature. 

This is a curious, and to me, a be- 
witching subject. But it leads to a volume 
of thought, which is not to be condensed 
in a letter I will remark only one extra- 
ordinary fact as it relates to style. The 
Augustan age is pronounced by some cri- 
ticks to have furnished the finest models of 
style, embellished to the highest endurable 

point: and of this, Cicero is always ad- 
18* 



210 THE BRITISH SPY, 

duced as the most illustrious example. • Yet 
it is remarkable, that seventy or eighty years 
afterwards, when the Roman style had be- 
come much more luxuriant, and was de- 
nounced by the critics of the day* as hav- 
ing transcended the limits of genuine orna- 
ment, Pliny the younger, in a letter to a 
friend, thought it necessary to enter into 
a foimal vindication of three or four meta- 
phors, which he had used in an oration, 
and which had been censured in Rome for 
their extravagance; but which, by the side 
of the meanest of Curran*s figures, would 
be poor, insipid and flat. Yet who will say 
that Curran's style has gone beyond the 
point of endurance? Who is not pleased 
with its purity ? Who is not ravished by its 
sublimity ? 

In England, how wide is the chasm be- 
tween the style of lord Verulam and that 
* See Quinctillian's Institutes. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 2 1 1 

of Edmund Burke, or M'Intosh's introduc- 
tion to his Findiccs Galliccs / That of the 
first is the plain dress of a Quaker; that 
of the two last the magnificent parapher- 
nalia of Louis XIV of France. In lord 
Verulam's day, his style was distinguished 
for its superiour ornament ; and in this res- 
pect, it was thought impossible to surpass 
it. Yet Mr. Burke, Mr. M*Intosh, and 
the other Jine writers of the present age, 
have, by contrast, reduced lord Verulam's 
flower garden to the appearance of a sim- 
ple culinary square. 

Perhaps it is for this reason, and because, 
as you know, I am an epicure, that I r .n ve- 
ry much interested by lord Verulam's manner. 
It is indeed a most agreeable relief to my 
mind to turn from the stately and dazzling 
rhapsodies of the day, and converse witli this 
plain and sensible old gentleman To me 
his style is gratifying on many accounts j and 



212 THE BRITISH SPST. 

there is this advantage in him, that instead of 
having three or four ideas rolled over and over 
again, like the fantastick evolutions and ever- 
changing shapes of the same sun-embroider- 
ed cloud, you gain new materials, new infor- 
mation at every breath. 

Sir Robert Boyle is, in my opinion another 
author of the same description, and therefore 
an equal, if not a higher favourite with me. 
In point of ornament he is the first grade in 
the mighty space (through the whole of which 
the gradations may be distinctly traced) be- 
tween Bacon and Burke. Yet he has no re- 
dundant verbiage ; has about him a per- 
fectly patriarchal simplicity ; and every peri- 
od is pregnant with matter. He has this ad- 
vantage too over lord Verulam : that he not 
only investigates all the subjects which are 
calculated to try the clearness, the force and 
the con-prehension of the human intellect : 
he introduces others also, in handling of 



THE BRITISH SPY. 213 

which he shows the masterly power with 
which he could touch the keys of the heart, 
and awaken all the tones of sensibility which 
belong to man. Surely, if ever a human be- 
ing deserved to be canonized for great, un- 
clouded intelligence, and sersphick purity 
and ecstasy of soul, that being was sir Ro- 
bert Boyle. 

When I reflect that this " pure intelligence, 
"this link between men and angels," was a 
christian, and look around upon the petty 
infidels and deists with which the world 
swarms, I am lost in amazement! Have 
they seen arguments against religion, which 
were not presented to sir Robert Boyle i* His 
religious works show that they have not. Are 
their judgments belter able to weigh those 
arguments than his was ? They have not the 
vanity even to believe it. Is the beam of their 
judgments more steady, and less liable to be 
disturbed by passion than his? no; for in 



214 THE BRITISH SPY. 

this he seems to have excelled all mankind. 
Are their minds more elevated and more ca- 
pable of comprehending the whole of this 
great subject, with all its connexions and dC' 
pendencies, than was the mind of sir Robert 
Boyle ? Look at the men : and the question 
is answered. How then does it happen that 
they have been conducted to a conclusion, so 
perfectly the reverse of his ? It is for this 
very reason : because their judgments are less 
extricated from the influence and raised above 
the mis* of passion: it is because their minds 
are less ethereal and comprehensive ; less 
capable than his was "to look through na- 
ture up to nature's God." And let them hug 
iheir precious, barren, hopeless infidelity : 
they are welcome to the horrible embrace ! 
■^ay we, my friend, never lose the rich and 
inexhaustible comforts of religion. 
Adieu, my S . . . . , 



The author of "an inquirer," on the theo- 
ry of the earth, begs leave to offer the follow- 
ing observations to the publisher of " the Bri- 
tish Spy/* in answer to some of his additional 
notes. 

When the Inquirer read, in the second let- 
ter of the British Spy, that '' the perpetual 
'' revolution of the earth, from west to east, 
" has the obvious tendency to conglomerate 
" the loose sands of the sea, on the eastern 
" coast,'* — " that whether the rolling of the 
" earth to the east give to the ocean an actual 
" counter-current to the west or not, the 
*' newly emerged pinnacles are whirled, by 
"the earth's motion, through the waters of 
" the deep ;" and from the continued opera- 
tion of the causes which produced them, that 
" all continents and islands will be caused, re- 
« ciprocally to approximate ;** when he read 



^16 THE BRITISH SPY, 

these and other similar passages, he saw n© 
reason to doubt, that the British Spy consider- 
ed the occean wow, as well as formerly, af- 
fected by the rotation of the earth ; or, to ex- 
press the same thing more correcdy, that the 
rotatory motion of the earth is but par- 
tially communicated to the ocean. This 
opinion, which a thousand facts may be 
brought to disprove, and which the fa- 
vourite cosmogonist of the British Spy says* 
no man cai> entertain who has the least know- 
ledge of physicks, it was decorous to sup- 
pose, had been advanced from inadvertence. 
If the meaning of the writer were taken by the 
Inquirer, in a greater latitude than was meant, 
lie is not the less sorry for his mistake, 

»The passage in Smellie's translation of BufFon stands 
thus : but every raan who has the least knowledge of phy- 
sicks, must allow, that no fluid which surrounds the earth, 
can be afifected by its rotation ; Vol. I. On Regular 
■winds. • 



THE BRITISH SPY. 2l7 

because it was not a natural one, and was 
not confined to himself. 

But the annotator of the Spy, without 
saying whether the supposed current now 
exist or not, thinks the former existence 
of such a current not improbable, and puts 
a case by way of illustrating his hypotheses. 
My reasoning on the subject, somewhat 
different from his, is briefly this. 

If the whole surface of the earth, when 

it first received its rotatory impulse, were 

covered with water, and this imfiulse were 

communicated to its solid fiart aloncy then, 

indeed, a current to the west would be 

produced ; and would continue, until the 

resistance, occasioned by the friction of the 

waters, gradually communicated the whole 

motion of the earth to the ocean. It is 

not easy to say, when this current would 

cease ; but it seems to me it would be more 

likely to wear the bed of the ocean smooth, 
19 



218 THE BRITISH SPY. 

than to raise protuberances ; and even, though 
it were to cause sand banks, it could never 
elevate them above its own level. 

I should observe that, to avoid circum- 
locution, I admit a current of the west ; 
because the effect is the same, as to allu- 
vion, whether the earth revolve under the 
waters, or the waters roll over the earth; 
though the fact is, that the ocean, like the 
oil in the plate, in the experiment proposed, 
would have a tendency to remain at rest, 
and whatever motion it acquired, must be 
tt) the east, like that of the earth, from 
which it was derived. 

If we suppose a few solitary mountains 
to lift their heads above the circumfluous 
ocean, we may in'er, by the rules of strict 
analogy, that they would be worn away by 
the friction of the passing waters, rather 
than that they would receive any accessions 
of soil. 



THE BRITISH SPY. 219 

But let US suppose some ridges of moun- 
tains running from north to south, and of 
sufficient extent and elevation to obstruct 
the course of the waters. In this case, 
the sudden whirling of the earth to the 
east would force the ocean on its wes- 
tern shores, where it would accumulate, 
until the gravity of the mass, thus elevated, 
overcame the force which raised it. Then 
one vast undulation of the stupendous mass 
would take place, from shore to shore, and 
would continue until it gradually yielded 
to the united effect of friction and gravity. 
A comparison between vessels of different 
sizes, partly filled with water, might ena- 
ble us to form a rational conjecture of the 
term of this oscillation; but be it in one 
year, or many years, I think the effect 
would more probably be, an abrasion of the 
mountain, than the formation of a continent. 

But the fiostulaturrtj that the first im- 



§2® THE BRITISH SPY. 

pulse to the earth was communicated to 
its solid part alone> on which all these sup- 
positions rest, is but a possibility : Whether 
we suppose that the cause, which first 
whirled the earth on its axis, is an as- 
cending link in nature's chain of causes, 
or the immediate act of the first Great 
Cause of all, it is not unHkely that it pene- 
trated and influenced every particle of 
matter, whether it were solid, liquid or aeri- 
form. 

On this subject, our suppositions are to 
be limited only by our invention. One 
man may resort to electricity, according to 
an alleged property of that fluid; another, 
to magnetism ; a third to the action of the 
sun's rays ; and a fourth, to a quality inhe- 
rent in matter; according to either of which 
hypotheses, no current could have existed. 

Monsieur de Buffbn, indeed, ascribes the 
earth's rotation to a mechanical and partial 



THE BRITISH SPY. 221 

impulse, the oblique stroke of a comet; 
but as, according to him, the earth was 
then one entire globe of melted glass, its 
rotatory motion must have been uniform, 
lonc^ before the ocean existed. 

Whoever would dispel the clouds in which 
this question is enveloped, and make it as 
clear " as the light of heaven," should in- 
deed be mihi magnus Afiollo : but hypothe- 
ses, of which nothing can be said, but that 
they are not impossible, though they may be- 
guile the lounger of a heavy hour, are little 
likely to further our knowledge of nature. 
In so boundless a field of conjecture, with 
scarce one twinkling star to guide us, we can 
hardly hope to find, among the number- 
less tracts of errour, that which singly leads 
lo truth. 

When the Inquirer spoke of the general 
bouleversement which many subterranean ap- 
pearances indicated, he did not mean even* 



222 THE BRITISH Sl'Y. 

to hint at their cause= but simply to express, 
as the word imports, the topsyturvy disorder, 
in which vegetable and marine substances 
are found : the one far above^ and the other far 
below, the seat of its original production. At 
the moment he was attempting to show, that 
every explanation of these phenomena was 
imperfect and premature, he hardly would 
have ventured to give one himself; for though 
" we should not suffer ourselves to be pas- 
sively fed on the pap of science," iu/ie7i we 
have attained our 7naturity, yet until we 
have attained it, he thinks it is better to be in 
leadingstrings, than to stumble at every step. 
In the progress of science, I doubt whether 
sound principles are abandoned for those 
that are less true. Novelty in moral specula- 
tion, aided as it may be, by our passions, may 
dazzle and mislead, but in physicks, though 
one errour may give place to another, when 
truth once gets possession, she holds it firm, 



THE BRITISH SPY. 223 

ever after. Thus the theories of cosmogo- 
nists follow one another, like wave obtruding 
upon wave; each demonstrating the fallacy of 
those which went before, and proved absurd 
in turn ; while the philosophy of Newton, in 
spite of the continued opposition of French 
academicians, and the later reveries of St. 
Pierre, gradually gains universal credit and 
respect. The member of the Royal Society, 
who accounted for the trade winds by the 
transpiration of tropical sea-weed, may have 
had his admirers ; but he has not been able 
to shake the theory of Dr. Halley. If Har- 
vey's system of generation had been as well 
supported by facts, as his discovery of the 
circulation of the blood, all hostility to the 
one, as well as the other, would have end- 
ed with his life. 

It certainly is not philosophical "to dis- 
" card a theory," because it may be unsup- 
ported by a name, nor yet, because there are 



<^^^- 



224 THE BRITISH SPY. 



Other more recent theories. In these and 
many other general remarks, I inlirely con- 
cur with the writer, though I do not clearly 
discern their application. 

I cannot conclude, without regretting, that 
I should be compelled to differ with a writer 
whose talents I so much admire, and whose 
sentiments I so often approve: but to bor- 
row a celebrated sentiment, my esteem for 
truth exceeds even my esteem for the Bri- 
tish Spy. Though neither of us may chance 
to convince the other, yet, if our discussion 
should lead those who have not the same pa- 
rental tenderness, for particular hypotheses or 
doubts, to a better understanding of the sub- 
ject, the light, that is thus elicited, will console 
me for the collision which produced it. 
October 12, 1803. 

THE END. 



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